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000l??4^ lt)A 













LI BRARY O F C ONGRE SS. 



^ 



{UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.} 



STUDIES 



d 



GENERAL SCIENCE. 



ANTOINETTE BROWN BLACKWELL. 




NEW YORK: 

G. P. PUTNAM AND SON, 66 1 Broadway, 

Opposite Bond Street. 

1869. 



oP ,°3 



^4 



i>- 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 

Antoinette Brown Blackwell, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. 



xV 



riverside, Cambridge: 

stereotyped and printed by 

h. o. houghton and company. 



K 



TO THE 

RELIGIOUS TEACHERS OF MY YOUTH, 

INCLUDING 

MY AGED FATHER AND MOTHER, 

AND 

TO THOSE WHO GENEROUSLY ASSISTED AT MY ORDINATION, 

£t)ts Volume 

IS AFFECTIONATELY AND RESPECTFULLY 
DEDICATED BY 

THE AUTHOR. 



PREFACE. 



HE following Essays are a summary of the con- 
clusions arrived at after a lifetime of more or 
less steady devotion to the subjects under con- 
sideration. My aim has been to make each article as 
complete and distinct in itself as the nature of the topic 
would allow ; and yet to connect them all in a progressive 
series of thought. 

In each separate Study , I have endeavored to bring 
myself into such a relation to the topics treated of, that 
I could clearly perceive every position at the time it was 
taken ; and thus, going forward in these statements, step 
by step, with open eyes, I have hoped the better to ena- 
ble others to keep progress with me in immediate mental 
vision. With this single purpose in view, I could pay 
only so much attention to style as would give clearness 
and directness of statement, and would allow me to be 
almost wholly absorbed with the special matter in hand. 
This method necessarily involved some repetition, frequent 
reference to parallel points and analogies, and a continual 
coordination of thoughts in harmony with the supposed 
coordinations of things ; yet, perhaps these almost un- 
avoidable repetitions and allusions, with their slight dif- 
ferences, arising as seen from different stand-points, may 
not be too frequent, at least for general readers. 



vi Preface. 

As these studies are the product of more than twenty 
years of an otherwise exceedingly busy life, through which, 
however, there has run a continuous thread of reading, 
thought, and observation upon these and kindred themes, 
it is at this time impossible always to give credit to the 
different authors from whom many various thoughts have 
been derived. When it seemed desirable to do so, I have 
tried to give authority for every statement of fact or scien- 
tific theory • and when this has not been done, such state- 
ments have been derived from reliable scientific sources, 
it is believed, in every instance. How far the system of 
thought which the book contains was derived by the 
author directly from the universe itself and how far from 
books, it would be impossible now to determine ; nor is it 
really of much importance. If one can perceive a truth, 
it matters very little whether he got it at first hand from 
God's book, or from man's ; and whoever should choose 
to lay claim to prior discovery is therefore quite welcome 
to it. 

Making no pretensions to a practical scientific knowl- 
edge, these essays claim to be nothing but studies of 
principles in their general grouping and mutual coordina- 
tions, as everywhere illustrated in things. 

The more metaphysical portions were the special stud- 
ies of early youth, when everything pertaining to mental 
philosophy was eagerly devoured ; with such imperfect 
digestion as youth has for abstract theorizing. The theo- 
logical and moral topics, though the constant food of child- 
hood, yet pertain more especially to early womanhood, in 
an Orthodox Theological Seminary, and subsequently, as 
Pastor of an Orthodox Congregational Church ; bound to 
the discharge of the usual duties of that position, in addi- 



Preface. vii 

tion to the more general demands of the lecturing field, — 
a period in which, while trying with reasonable faithfulness 
outwardly to meet the just expectations of others, for 
myself, I studied first to reconcile revealed and natural 
religion, and afterwards to learn what the basis and the 
doctrines of the one absolute religion really are. The 
remaining more generally scientific portions of the work, 
with the labor of grouping and harmonizing the whole, 
were carried on in mature life ; but while those earlier 
studies were hindered by duties which few women attempt 
to shoulder, the later ones were impeded (perhaps in both 
cases I should say aided) by duties which no man ever 
performed — those which devolve on the mother of a 
young family, all of whom are still in childhood. 

All these things are stated not in egotism, but yet 
frankly, as friend might speak with friend, to that gener- 
ous public upon whose indulgence I must rely in its judg- 
ment of the many deficiencies and faults which must 
necessarily appear in the present volume. Yet my hope 
is that the work may prove to be a reasonably good illus- 
tration of the truth that it makes very little difference to 
the student of things where he begins to study, or what 
part he learns first, since each portion is replete with 
interest and important to every other • so that everything 
true is corroborative of all other truths ; and all alike 
point upwards to the common Author. 




TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



GENERAL STATEMENT. page 

All Events are Coordinated — Creation a System of related 
Rational Principles, realized in Absolute Substance and Prop- 
erty — Properties of Matter Quantitative — Properties of 
Mind, also Sentient or Qualitative I 

THE TEXT-BOOK. 

The Actual Universe is the Source from whence all Truth must 
be derived 12 

PERCEPTIVE FORCE. 

Perception Cognizes by Direct Intuition — Sense- Perception is 
Presentative like all other Perception — Perceptive Force co- 
ordinated with the Objective 19 

CONSTRUCTIVE FORCE. 
Deduction the Process of perceiving Abstract Principles — Con- 
ception the Creation of Possible Principles — Hypotheses — 
Originality not possible in Philosophy — Method . . .28 

PERCEPTION DISTINGUISHED FROM CONCEPTION. 

Perception presupposes an Object to be known — Conception is 
a Subjective Process — the one Discovers, the other Originates 
— Classification — Abstraction ...... 35 

WE PERCEIVE THE REAL OBJECT. 

The Representative Image or Idea — Reid — The Objective pre- 
sents Itself 45 



x Table of Contents. 

WE PERCEIVE THE SUBSTANCE OF BODIES. 

PAGE 

The Common Belief versus Authority — Dr. McCosh — We per- 
ceive Substance as manifesting Phenomena — Intuition Itself 
our only Witness 48 

WE PERCEIVE BODIES AT A DISTANCE. 

Theory of Sir William Hamilton — Material Media relating 
Mind and its Object not Representative of the latter, but Co- 
operative with both — Sensation the Result of Objective Action 
on the Mind — Perception, of the Mind's Action on the Object 53 

MENTAL AND EXTRA-ORGANIC COORDINATIONS. 

Organic Modifications are Extra-mental — Mind competent to 
testify only as to its own proper Experiences — Perpetual 
Interaction between Mind and Matter generally; and the 
Results . »59 

WE MAY PERCEIVE THE RATIONAL PROPERTIES OF 
THINGS. 

The Ox perceives Quantitative Properties only — Man per- 
ceives the Abstract Principles of these Properties, perceives 
the Rational or Thought Constitution of Things as existing 
and operating 67 

THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER. 

Definitions — Matter is constituted by Extension — Everything 
is extended in a Special and Definite Manner — The Proper- 
ties of all like Atoms are Identical — Allotropy — Catalysis — 
Crystallization — Modes of Motion and Force — Divisibility — 
All Modes of Material Force Correlated — Action and Reac- 
tion equal — Quantity — Time — Space — All Properties and 
Processes Coordinated — All Process Progress, and proceed- 
ing by established Gradations 74 

MIND. 

The Forces of Matter are Unsentient and Quantitative — The 
Forces of Mind are also Sentient and Qualitative : the one is 
Lifeless,, the other Living 109 



Table of Contents. xi 



WE MAY IMMEDIATELY PERCEIVE MINDS; THEIR 
SUBSTANCES, PROPERTIES, AND PROCESSES. 

PAGE 

Mind has no Appreciable Properties of Extension — We perceive 
it as Cooperative with its Organism, as we perceive a Molecule 
of Matter acting in the Mass — Self- Consciousness — We per- 
ceive our own Minds in the Exercise of Mental Processes — We 
perceive other Minds manifesting similar Processes in connec- 
tion with their Organisms 1 16 

COORDINATIONS OF MIND AND BODY. 

Mind and its Organism are mutually Dependent — Either can 
Originate Disease — Idiocy — Insanity — Sleep — Mind and 
Body cooperate Quantitatively — Definition of Life . . . 125 

THE CONSTITUTION OF MIND. 

Each Mind is constituted by Sentient Properties — It is Living, 
Personal, Indivisible — All its Processes are Personal Expe- 
riences — There are many Modes of Sentience, related not by 
Extension, but by Intension— Coordinated with Pleasure and 
Pain — Correlation of Sentient Modes 138 

COORDINATIONS OF GROWTH. 

All Organic Growth is conducted by similar Processes — Organic 
and Inorganic Processes contrasted — Sentient Properties 
stimulate and direct Coordinated Organic Growth — Active 
Sentient Experience is coordinated with Quantitative Pro- 
cesses — Various Processes of Organ-forming — The Mind 
as Created — Mental Development — Hereditary Traits — Dif- 
ferent Modes and Conditions of Organic Growth . . .154 

DIFFERENT TYPES OF MIND. 

Sentient Properties are common to all Living Beings — The Char- 
acter of the Sentient Nature determines the Character of its 
Organism, and the Organism is indicative of the Indwelling 
Life — The Sentience of Plants — Sleep of Plants — Each Class 
of Mind is constituted by Special Sentient Properties — Coor- 
dination of Vegetable and Animal Processes — The Conscious- 
ness of the Plant Subjective — that of the Animal both Subjec- 
tive and Objective — Variety and Value of Vegetable Sen- 



xii Table of Contents. 

PAGE 

tience — Animals in a Common Organism — Special Instincts 

— Theory of Instinct — The Irrational Mind . . . .184 

AN ECLECTIC DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 

The Gradual and Progressive Nature of all Processes — The 
Growth of Species not an Exception to this Universal Order — 
One Type of Sentient Being cannot be developed into another 

— Whatever the Material Beginning, each Mind must ulti- 
mately build up its Coordinated, Typical Organism ; beginning 
from the Simple Cell — Variations — Hybrids — More Phil- 
osophical to suppose an Organic Matrix for all Higher Animals 
than a wholly Inorganic Origin — Darwin — Theory of " Pan- 
genesis " 232 

THE "STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE." 

The Scheme which requires all Highly Organized Tissues to be 
built up from preceding Tissues is a Scheme of highest Econ- 
omy and Beneficence 246 

THE RATIONAL MIND. 

A Rational Mind is a Mind possessing Appetencies for Rational 
Principles — It can perceive the intrinsic relative Values of 
Things ; and choose accordingly — Moral Principles the Out- 
growth of Coordinated Sentient Relations — The Moral Being 
may perceive these from an Impersonal Stand-point . . 253 

THE RATIONAL MIND AS CAUSE. 

The Rational Mind may produce new designed Events by new 
Coordinations of Substantial Elements — It may also cause 
new Sentient Events — A Rational Cause must work with the 
Principles of Things — Qualitative Events superior to Quan- 
tity 260 

MEMORY. 
Memory an Appetency which brings Past Experiences back 
again into Present Consciousness — The Conditions for Re- 
membering — It gives only the Subjective Elements of Events 

— Memory of Principles and of Feelings compared — Mem- 
ory is the Immediate Perception of Subjective Facts . . 272 



Table of Contents. xiii 

LANGUAGE. page 

Language as a Mental Property is an Appetency for the Expres- 
sion of Subjective States — Feeling expresses itself in Sound 
and other Natural Manifestations — Representative Language 

— Written Language embodies the Thought of the Writer ; 
which Thought is Presentatively perceived by the Reader . 279 

CONSERVATION OF MATTER AND ITS PROPERTIES. 

All Matter is Indestructible — All its Forces also are conserved 

— Every Atom, with all its Properties, is perpetually Existent . 287 

IMMORTALITY. 

Life opposed not to Dissolution, which pertains to the Body, 
but to Annihilation — Life is Perpetual Sentient Existence, and 
Indestructible — Belief in Immortality, Universal and Intuitive 

— Immortality demanded by Moral Fitness and Beneficence . 291 

SELFISHNESS IS A QUANTITATIVE VICE. 

Quantities, which can belong to but One, lead to Avarice — The 
Grasping Spirit is intrinsically debasing — To drag down 
another to the Domain of Irrational Values is Infamous . . 301 

UNSELFISHNESS IS A QUALITATIVE VIRTUE. 

Rational or Qualitative Values may be possessed entire by any 
Number of Persons at the same Time — Giving here does not 
impoverish the Giver — A Many Fold Increase — Qualitative 
Values lead to Unselfishness — Social Influences — Relative 
Sentient Values — The Appetency for the Intrinsically Best . 306 

LAW AND ITS SANCTIONS. 

Laws are either Principles inherent in the Nature of Things, or 
they are Factitious Enactments — The Laws of Things are all Im- 
mutable — Their Sanctions are Legitimate Results, which can- 
not be remitted — Human Laws, Enactments, whose Penalties 
may be remitted — Repentance and Reparation — Forgive- 
ness, its Nature and Conditions 314 

SOCIAL PROGRESS. 

Conditions of Progress — Relations of External Stimulants and 
Internal Appetencies — Social Aids — A Process may be an 



xiv Table of Contents. 

PAGE 

Irregular Advance, or even, for a time, Retrograde ; but it must 
ultimate in Unending Progress . . . • . . . 328 

SUBSTANCE AND FORCE AS UNCREATED. 

We arrive at Absolute Being by Abstraction — We know only 
that Absolute Substance and Property are and must be . . 336 

CREATION. 

Creation a System of Related, Unchanging Facts and Coordi- 
nated Changes — Is a Scheme of Realized Thought — Unity 
of Creation as evidenced in all Departments of Science — 
Oneness of all Rational Principles of Things .... 338 

NATURE OF THE CREATOR INFERRED FROM THE 
CREATION. 

Only two Classes of Cause — Rational Cause — Tl <i Creator, 
Rational Cause of the Universe — Rational CausaK; ; necessi- 
tates a Personal Mind — Omniscience — Omnipotenc — Moral 
Perfections — We know the Creator only through His, Creation 
— Providence — Finite Mind unable to fully compreh >nd the 
hend the Infinite — The Creator as evidenced by our Sentient 
Appetencies and Needs 348 





GENERAL STATEMENT. 

j|E find ourselves living in the midst of a perpetual 
series of coordinated events. Everything is so 
obviously related to ourselves and to everything 
else, that mankind has been ceaselessly impelled, from 
the first, to believe that all things known to us are allied 
in a general unity. As a better estimate has steadily un- 
folded an ever wider range of relations and correlations, 
and a more accurately defined knowledge has gradually 
accumulated, there has arisen an almost unanimous ver- 
dict, that the whole existing Cosmos is essentially a Uni- 
verse. It is found to be more than a simple mechanism ; 
but, apparently, it is not more than a complex, all-com- 
prehensive mechanism, whose innate motive forces are all 
mutually and quantitatively cooperative, and in part, also, 
living or sentient self-determining powers, also quantita- 
tively coordinated with the general whole. 

Existence, or Being absolute and uncreated, must, com- 
prehend all self-existent substance, everything which ex- 
ists and persists in its own right, independent of every- 
thing else. That absolute Being is necessarily an, abso- 
lute unity is not to me self-evident. Every ultimate atom, 
if literally self-existent, that is, if permanently existent, 
independent of time and of every power or possibility 
whatever, would be an absolute, an uncreated atom, 
though myriads of other similar or like atoms- might co- 
exist and be even co-related. It would still be absolute 
as to its existence, necessary and indestructible. Sub- 
stance and Property are both regarded in the present essay 
as self-existent, or absolutely and necessarily existent ; 
1 



2 General Statement. 

and both together are understood as comprising the whole 
of Absolute Existence or Absolute Being. Every property 
of things would be a nonentity, or at most it could be 
nothing more than an abstract pure principle, except as 
actualized or existent in substance ; and absolute sub- 
stance, totally without properties, is at least incredible, 
if not impossible. If all absolute substance were self- 
existent without properties, then from such an absolute 
existence nothing relative could ever have arisen. Self- 
existent substance and property, therefore, together com- 
prise absolute Being. 

Property is a general term comprehending both the 
forces and the capacities of things. Force, one mode of 
property, has been determined by science to be as self- 
existent and indestructible as substance ; it is the ab- 
solute and persisting motive power of all substance ; 
and force, it is evident, could be literally nothing except 
realized in and through substance. What absolute sub- 
stance, its absolute force, or absolute capacity, are, per se, 
further than that they are all self-existent, I do not attempt 
to say. With this absolute or uncreated existence we 
have comparatively very little to do in the present series of 
studies. It may be interesting and useful to speculate as 
to the possible nature of even uncreated Being — to try 
to decide negatively what it is not and cannot be, or at 
least cannot be thought to be by finite intelligences like 
ourselves ; but to attempt to dogmatize or settle anything 
positively in regard to the absolute would be futile, since 
the absolute is acknowledged to be eminently above and 
beyond the grasp of our present human faculties. It might 
be equal folly to determine, in advance, that we can know 
nothing whatever of the absolute, the infinite, or perfect ; 
for these all are surely to be studied until we are entire- 
ly satisfied as to how much and how little the incar- 
nated human mind can know about them ; and if we 
must finally be content with very little positive knowledge, 



General Statement. 3 

it will yet be a great point gained to have fathomed the 
depth of our own subjective powers, and to have found 
the boundary line into the unknown or but vaguely known 
beyond. Even if a " learned ignorance " must for the 
present suffice, we may still hope that the eager, ever- 
seeking mind may find a yet higher reward in some further 
stage of progress. Meantime, there is assuredly some 
possible conception of the absolute as distinguished in 
thought from the relative, of the infinite as discriminated 
from the finite, of the perfect as separated from the im- 
perfect ; but all this is to be held in abeyance. 

Our first inquiries relate simply to the relative, the finite, 
the created — in a word, to the existing univei'se. While 
substance and property are both regarded as necessarily 
absolute and self- existent in themselves \ yet all their 
established, coordinated modes and processes evidence 
so unquestionably a necessity for the highest conscious 
thought in determining their countless beautiful adjust- 
ments, that I hold them to be most evidently created ; 
and by no conceivable possibility as admitting of self- 
existence. The adaptation of all preestablished changes, 
and the fixed, definite relations invariably subsisting be- 
tween them, cannot pertain to a self-existent necessity. 
Here is realized thought or creation. The present uni- 
verse is regarded as having received its existing consti- 
tution through a preestablished, adapted system or ra- 
tional scheme of created modes and processes, actualized 
and harmonized in self-existent, absolute Being. The 
whole existing constitution of things is held to have been 
created, — that is, to have been both conceived or planned 
in ideal, and realized in the actual. Creation is assumed 
to be an established, preadjusted scheme of pure princi- 
ples, literally applied and made operative in things. 
Though all ultimate force and capacity must be self-ex- 
istent in its own substance, yet their coordinations or 
mutual perpetual adaptations are so obviously the prod- 



4 General Statement. 

uct of rational thought, that such preadaptations could 
not have been self-existent ; but must have been origi- 
nated by a rational thinker. Absolute Being may or 
may not be outside of our present cognizance ; but the 
scheme of rational adaptations, now actualized and opera- 
tive in things, is maintained to be decidedly within the 
field of human cognition. It is this perpetually operative 
immutable system of fixed and definite adjustments in all 
the modes and processes of things, sentient and unsen- 
tient alike, which necessitates a Rational Designer and 
Establisher of so preeminently rational a system. One 
may be put down if he attempt to dogmatize on the ab- 
solute, which is certainly outside of direct perception ; but 
I do not well see how he can be answered when he ap- 
peals to the testimony of that which is self-evident, and 
may be immediately perceived, in its many widely ramify- 
ing relations, by every rational mind which will take the 
trouble to look for itself. 

Our inquiries relate chiefly to the present constitution 
of the universe. This constitution is definitely estab- 
lished and immutable, though rigidly and mathematically 
adjusted in all its parts \ while all its processes are evi- 
dently the result of prevision and prearrangement. Prop- 
erties, abstractly, are simply rational principles ; and, 
independent of their substances, in the nature of things, 
they could be nothing more than this. They may be 
regarded subjectively as thoughts, concepts, ideas, but 
from their rational or immaterial character, they are then 
dependent upon the thinking or perceiving mind. Objec- 
tively, neither a force, a capacity, nor any mode of exist- 
ence could be realized or made actual except through an 
alliance with substantial existence. Thus, the concept 
of motion is solely an intellectual thought : there can 
never be an actual motion-producing force, unless there 
is a substance possessing such force, and never an 
actual motion, unless there is a substance which is 



General Statement. 5 

moved. The principle of a circle is the pure thought- 
construction of a possible circle. No real circle can 
exist unless a real substance takes on this pure mental 
form. So there can be no actual extension without some- 
thing which is extended ; no actual bitterness unless 
there is something which produces the special effect upon 
the palate which we call bitter. In this last example, 
there is a whole series of delicate adjustments requisite to 
produce in the conscious mind the sensation and per- 
ception of that quality of experience which we call bit- 
terness. These fixed preordained adjustments of all 
things, in all the actual and possible processes of nature, 
cannot be intelligently conceived of as existing of neces- 
sity or through any irrational chance. They cannot be 
self-existent, they must be the product of thought. 

We find that we ourselves are so constituted and so 
co-adapted to everything about us, that we are unable to 
construct even the simplest thing except by realizing in 
it our own rational ideas, subject always to the prees- 
tablished principles of nature. An old wife's knitting- 
work and the child's first pinafore for her doll are both 
records of thought and purpose actualized. The rational 
plan is expressed, substantialized, as an accomplished 
fact. Thoughts are thus embodied by men in every 
species of art and handicraft ; the inventor realizes his 
ideal in his invention. The artisan repeats his in his craft, 
and thus systems of thought, more or less elaborate, are 
everywhere expressed, as it were incarnated, in things. 
Any one, looking at several new machines — say a sub- 
soil plough and a windmill — could, by studying them in- 
tently enough, easily discern the principle on which each 
was designed to operate. He would perceive that the iron 
share of the subsoil plough was not intended to whirl round 
in the air, and that the sails of the mill were not designed 
to burrow in the earth ; then, if he saw them in actual 
operation, the ploughshare moving on buried under ground, 



6 General Statement. 

and the mill-sails turning rapidly about in the wind, he 
might discover the plan upon which each of these ma- 
chines was constructed, and its adjustment to the forces 
through which it was designed to work. Given the ma- 
chine, some rational plan or scheme of its structure and 
operations is a necessary antecedent. The thought-plan 
is originally distinct from the machine ; yet it is indis- 
pensable that it should first exist, and finally be expressed, 
crystallized in the very structure of the machine. 

" The universe/' as one class of philosophers now so 
stoutly maintain, " is not a machine," — that is to say, it 
is a great deal more than any dead, unsentient mechanism 
could ever be, even if it were infinite in its comprehen- 
siveness ; nevertheless, the machine and the universe may 
both possess this one common phase of which I speak, — 
they may both embody properties whose new relations 
and combinations originate new and designed modes, 
processes, and results. Absolute principles may exist as 
innate, necessary properties of things : there may be ab- 
solute force or motive-power ; and absolute capacity or 
receptivity for being extended, moved, or divided ; but 
no self-existent, irrational necessity could create a related, 
rational scheme of pure coordinations, each dependent on 
all the others ; and could substantialize this or establish 
it in active cooperation, through the use and exercise 
of absolute substance and its absolute properties. It is, in 
part, the old argument : if we see a watch, we know that 
there must have been a watch-maker, — though we do not 
therefore know that there is no absolute substance and ab- 
solute force, which, being self-existent, had no maker ; but 
which have, nevertheless, been so coordinated in this 
watch, that the watch, as such, is inherently proved to 
be a new creation, a creation not of the absolute but of 
the relative. So far as we can determine, there must 
have been absolute force from the beginning ; for there is 
nothing within ourselves which can credit the belief that 



General Statement. 7 

something could ever have been made literally from nothing; 
but it is not, therefore, certain or credible that any of 
the present modes of force, such as gravity, heat, light, 
electricity, magnetism, or chemical affinity, could have 
existed from the beginning, or could have existed at all, 
if there had been no intelligence, will, and executive ability 
adequate to originate and establish them. Energy may 
be self-existent ; but a definite system of correlated, inter- 
changeable modes of energy, sentient as well as unsentient, 
coordinating thoughts, feelings, purposes, and all possible 
living personal experiences with all the other modes of 
force and capacity now cooperative in the universe, is 
necessarily created ; and, as it seems to me, it may be 
shown to be so from an intrinsic rational or intellectual 
necessity. It is not proposed to answer the child's ques- 
tion, " Who made God ? " or even to attempt to enter so 
intimately into his wisdom and power — which to us must 
be as inscrutable as our human works are to the lower 
irrational animals — as to try to describe his original crea- 
tive processes ; but we must try to comprehend and state 
the nature of the processes which we see everywhere 
going on about us in the creation as it now exists. We 
see that the universe is constituted after a perfected, 
rational, persisting plan, which connects all things in or- 
derly, preestablished processes. It is not even necessary 
to attempt to state how this plan got itself into the exist- 
ing universe, since there it is, the irrevocable nature and 
constitution of things — at least to change it is utterly 
without the reach of human effort. Who originated this 
scheme of things, or whether it was ever originated at all, 
are questions which cannot affect the fact that here it is, 
actualized and in active operation. 

Describe the present related modes of anything which 
exists, and you inevitably portray a more beautiful series 
of rational concepts than it would enter into the heart 
of man to conceive. Look at the harmonized structure 



8 General Statement. 

of every bird — a delicate adapted frame-work of slender 
bones, some of which fill with air, and thus by lightening 
its specific gravity, in connection with the strong muscles 
of the wing and the slender anterior part of the body, en- 
able all birds who possess such a structure in perfection 
to indulge in rapid flight. Let these facts be pointed out 
to a little child, and it receives a new and charming group 
of thoughts ; but they are thoughts which have been ossi- 
fied in the very bones of every bird since the world began. 
Whether or not some mind first conceived this admirable 
plan of bird-structure, yet the plan exists, and is registered 
in every organism of the whole feathered race. The savans 
have disagreed widely as to the origin of the undeviating, 
law-abiding nature of things ; but they are unanimous in 
portraying its admirable fitness, beauty, and persistence. 
Often, too, they are unconscious witnesses, intent on state- 
ments entirely foreign to this ; hence the added value of 
their unwitting testimony. May we not, then, accept the 
fact that there is a rational scheme of things, which can be 
perceived as realized in the things themselves — a scheme 
which may be stated in words so intelligibly that most 
minds can apprehend it, and be able to verify its truths 
for themselves ; and that this scheme of coordinated ex- 
isting processes is the essential nature or innate constitu- 
tion of all known substances ? 

Principles can be applied, and practically related only in 
and through substances. This is a universal proposition. 
The converse is also true ; substances can be relatively 
constituted only through the application and operation of 
related principles. So much the Universe and the ma- 
chine possess in common. 

Without correlations or adapted modes of property, 
Being might still be veritable absolute being, doubtless : 
but it would be, to our apprehension, chaotic existence, 
nothing more. Being, without thought adaptations, with- 
out a relational constitution, the result of an unintel- 



General Statement. 9 

lectual necessity or chance, would be something, indeed, 
whose nature is so without the province either of our 
perceptions or conceptions, that we can only regard it as 
something to us incomprehensible. Our intellectual na- 
tures are coordinated with Being as it is now constituted ; 
exercising and manifesting correlated properties, and pre- 
senting itself to us through definite related modes and 
processes. A mode of Being is the form under which any 
substance exists and acts, and all modes are perpetually 
changing. Thus, we perceive bodies as having exten- 
sion, form, size, color, resistance, and other like correlated 
modes, and recognize them as possessing various inter- 
changeable modes of force, which mutually act and react 
upon each other, according to the most rigid mathemati- 
cal laws ; while, by predetermined, definite processes, thus 
resulting, there arise these changing manifestations of 
extension, form, size, color, resistance, etc. The amount 
of force (and also of capacity), as a whole, is found to be 
unvarying, being neither more nor less under any change 
of conditions ; and this is true not only as regards sub- 
stance in general, but also as to every least particle. 
Each atom, it is believed, possesses a fixed amount of spe- 
cial force (and capacity) of its own, which is inseparable 
from itself; but whose various established modes are all 
mutually interchangeable, and are also so correlated to 
similar modes in other atoms that any given mode of 
force in action will excite a coordinated mode in every 
other atom upon which it acts ; while the atoms acted 
upon react, also, quantitatively, and under equally well- 
established coordinations. The properties, modes, and 
processes of matter are all found to be rigidly quantita- 
tive, and the action and reaction between them is always 
exactly equal, so that they all exist and act strictly accord- 
ing to the mathematical principle of precisely so much 
for so much. The properties of matter are all, therefore, 
strictly mechanical ; and there is evidence that they are, 



io General Statement. 

also, unsentient, or simply and unconsciously mechani- 
cal. 

The properties of mind, on the contrary, are all held to 
be sentient or living properties ; and though they, also, 
are quantitatively coordinated with all the modes and pro- 
cesses of matter, and are under the law of equal action 
and reaction as to all activities in conjunction with mat- 
ter, yet the properties of mind are also related in quality 
or kind and intensity of modes. Sentient properties are 
modes of sensations, perceptions, thoughts, purposes, self- 
determinations, and though these sentient modes never 
ignore or contravene the laws of the unsentient, to which 
they are allied, yet they have, in addition, coordinated 
laws and principles of their own, of a wholly unlike and 
higher character. Mental forces are all appetencies, and 
mental capacities are all sentie?it capabilities ; hence, while 
matter is substance constituted quantitatively only, by re- 
lated unsentient properties, mind is substance constituted 
both quantitatively and also qualitatively by sentient prop- 
erties. Our cognizance of Being is therefore cognizance 
of substances possessing mutually adjusted and adapted 
properties ; so that all our knowledge of it turns upon a 
knowledge of its rational constitution. The very exist- 
ence of differentiated substances is directly dependent 
upon a mutual adaptation of all modes and processes — 
the whole existing cosmos hangs upon it, and would fall 
into anarchy if one single modification of any property 
were destroyed. Though we know that absolute Being 
cannot be dependent upon the present constitution of the 
universe, but that this constitution must be dependent 
upon the absolute Being for its actualization in the present 
creation; yet this rational constitution is to our cogni- 
zance its only life, beauty, and value. Thought has been 
applied to things, and each atom, whether matter or 
mind, is allied to its own immutable properties, with their 
wide diversity of coordinated modes and processes, which 



General Statement. 1 1 

are forever turning and overturning, but always develop- 
ing more fully the preestablished order of things ; moving 
molecules, moving worlds ; quickening minds, developing 
races ; lighting, warming, evolving, organizing, animating, 
ennobling, developing; till the result is before us — the 
physical and mental universe, one and harmonious. Force, 
the mover, the evolutionist, the one energy made effective 1 
through many correlated modes, is not only the persisting 
property of each unsentient atom, but of each sentient 
mind ; and the entire coordinated plan continues in un- 
resting operation. With our finite minds, we may not ex- 
pect to perceive at once the whole scope of this all-com- 
prehensive hypothesis. 




THE TEXT-BOOK, 



HILOSOPHY may be defined as the science of 
substances, their properties, modes, and pro- 
cesses — that is, a science embracing the sum 
total of all the facts of existence. Is a true philosophy, 
then, possible to mankind with their present endowment 
of faculties ? Evidently a completed or perfected philos- 
ophy is not attainable by men in the present stage of hu- 
man development; yet such a philosophy, such a deter- 
minate science of everything, assuredly does exist, and is 
realized or made actual in the established nature of things. 
It may, then, be directly perceived by whoever has powers 
of perception adequate to the task. The universe is. What 
is it ? This is the ever-recurring question. Perhaps the 
most comprehensive answer may be, It is something know- 
able ! We have already learned enough of it to perceive 
that it is written in characters clearly cut and immutable ; 
there needs, then, only a competent reader. If there be an 
Infinite Mind, He has read all things ; this, too, whether 
He himself has written the whole record or not ; that is, 
whether it was He who created all the facts or whether 
they otherwise originated. Omniscience must compre- 
hend all knowledge ; and I hold it to be a self-evident 
truth, that whatever is, of inherent necessity is knowable 
as it is, provided there be a mind capable of comprehend- 
ing it. All knowledge is accessible to whoever has pow- 
ers adequate to find it. We perceive that objective truth 
is coordinated with our intellectual powers, so that all 
knowledge of it is intuition, is derived immediately from 
the object. Mediate knowledge is only belief or inference. 



The Text-Book. 13 

Nature has all her facts stereotyped. Suppose the 
naturalist wishes to understand the modes by which she 
has built up her extensive ranges of mountains ; he is 
curious as to the materials she used, the processes which 
she employed, and the time which she occupied in perfect- 
ing her work. Where shall he look for information? 
History is silent, for men have no record of the early 
times before the mountains were made. He must ques- 
tion the mountains themselves ; he must study each out- 
cropping rock, and penetrate by hammer and shaft into a 
long series of orderly records. Thus the geologist has 
been enabled to find in various parts of the earth's crust 
a sufficiently plain and legible science of the earth ; his 
reading is still incomplete, many pages seem to him mis- 
placed or wholly wanting, and doubtless he often misin- 
prets the facts and reasons falsely upon the insufficient 
data before him ; but, as a whole, the record is so self- 
evident that no one can intelligently doubt its fundamen- 
tal truths. Nature writes her events, often, upon the most 
fragile plants and flowers, on the very winds and waters, 
and all the most evanescent and changing forms, as well as 
upon the most permanent. Her record is always as en- 
during as the phases of the object upon which she writes ; 
and, sometimes, as if fearing both would be lost, she pet- 
rifies the whole and leaves it thus to endure for ages. She 
has often preserved in stone the history of her frailest 
leaves, her most ephemeral and minutest insects and in- 
fusoria, the record of her ebbing and flowing tides, of the 
piles of dust blown together by her winds, the footprints 
of her smallest birds, and of her rain-drops falling upon 
the sands. Shall she be thus careful of her most tran- 
sient modes and processes, and not have ordained the 
conservation of the permanent properties of things, by a 
still more scrupulous arrangement ? 

All the possible modes of property, the most obvious 
and the most subtle, are alike coordinated in substance ; 



14 The Text-Book. 

and there alone must we search for them. When a 
chemist would discover the nature of an alkali, he must 
bring forward his alkali and interrogate it. He must test 
it, compel it to witness in its own behalf, cross-examine it, 
entice it into a large number of possible complications 
with other things, till he has looked so deeply into its 
nature that he can tell with certainty what it will do and 
be under very widely different conditions. The properties 
which control his alkali are enthroned within the alkali, 
as immutable and enduring as the substances to which 
they are wedded. He cannot invent or originate them j 
they exist already, and therefore can only be discovered. 
If Sir Isaac Newton seeks to know the laws which regu- 
late the fall of bodies to the earth, the revolution of plan- 
ets around the sun, or any other facts as to motion, he, 
too, must study properties as he finds them at work in 
nature. Observing motion under a large variety of con- 
ditions, he can see that all bodies in our solar system, and 
so far as observation or analogies reach, that all bodies in 
the universe, gravitate towards all other bodies in a grand 
mathematical procession. The law of gravitation is but 
the expression of one persisting fact in the general con- 
stitution of things — a statement of the mode of action 
in one coordinated process. It is a truth obtained by in- 
duction, which is only far-reaching, related perception. 

All mental properties, all social, moral, and religious 
principles, are also registered in the natures of the beings 
possessing them \ they are incorporated in these natures 
as constitutional elements, indestructible like the natures 
themselves. A law of things is not a statute, propound- 
ing and enforcing a truth ; but it is simply the expression 
of an established fact as to some mode or process. All 
the laws of relative processes and obligations are of this 
character, and are inherent in the substances which pos- 
sess the modes of property described. Where is the 
natural and legitimate substratum of all social and moral 



The Text-Book. 15 

law? Evidently in social and moral natures. A social 
law is the statement of a predetermined coordination of 
mental natures ; in other words, it is the expression of a 
social fact as it was planned ideally in the creative 
scheme. A moral law is an expression of the ideal 
adjustment of moral facts, an expression of the high- 
est fitness of things, and therefore of the most obliga- 
tory process to a self-determining actor. This highest 
fitness of all moral facts or possibilities is to be found, 
directly, only in connection with moral natures. It is 
neither my design to touch the great question as to the 
Christian Revelation, revered as the authorized exponent 
of Moral Law by all Christendom, the supposed revela- 
tion of the one hundred and eighty millions of fighting 
Mohammedans, that of the propagandist Boodhists who 
have quiescently absorbed more than one third of all the 
peoples of the earth, — or of any other possible sacred 
teachings. The Author of the moral universe, first writing 
his record in things, may or may not afterwards explain 
it in books, or by the mouth of inspired teachers; but 
the point to be made now is, not how we came by a 
knowledge of the current moral truths which we all rec- 
ognize ; but, where are those truths to be found at first 
hand, if one has power to discover or verify them for 
himself. Moral laws are not substances, to be manufac- 
tured from something going before, as we weave broadcloth 
from the yarn ; but like all other natural laws, they are 
expressions of the permanent constitution of things. But 
as applied to natures which are sentient and allied to vary- 
ing qualities of experience, I assert their claim to be re- 
garded as the ultimate, noblest facts of moral natures. 
Moral laws are the highest rational principles, made real 
in the coordinated constitutions of living moral beings. 
One can learn Botany in a grammar-school just as con- 
sistently as he can learn Morals, Religion, ^Esthetics, or 
Metaphysics simply from the teachers and thinkers, or 



1 6 The Text-Book. 

from their second-hand writings ; for the roots of all these 
sciences are alike in things. The dry, scientific nomen- 
clature of the botanist overflows with life and poetry in 
the open air, in the midst of the beautiful realities which 
it represents ; and even hair-splitting metaphysics become 
one masterly system of live fact, full of the muscular and 
nervous energy of your own noblest life, within its own 
adytum of truth. 

Again the immutable elements of the universe are 
doomed to no buried Herculaneum of mutilated and de- 
faced records — they are as perfect and active now as in 
the oldest time. The physicists announce to us the con- 
servation of all substances and forces, yesterday, to-day, 
and forever ; and they are studying hitherto unread pages 
with their whole souls in their eyes, till they are nothing 
but eye-sight, — of course they will find what they are 
searching after so diligently. Students of the highest 
social and moral science need have no fear that the es- 
tablished, orderly adjustments of the unsentient world will 
not be equaled and excelled in the sentient. As living, 
conscious existence is of more worth than anything else ; 
so all those mutual adaptations of social interests, which 
coordinate all living experiences, it will be found, are not 
less carefully prevised and preadjusted. Modes and pro- 
cesses change perpetually ; yet even they are all coordi- 
nated and perpetually interchangeable in the world of liv- 
ing activity as in that of merely mechanical processes. 
Life with its sentient properties is as radically indestruc- 
tible and immutable as any other class of being. 

But if one would master the whole scheme of general 
and special adaptations necessary to promote the opera- 
tions even of an extensive and complicated system of 
modern machinery, he must study it long and intently, and 
with powers well disciplined to that end ; for mental abil- 
ity is indispensable to the cognition of any great creative 
work. Much thought is required to conceive and con- 



The Text-Book. if 

summate the plan, and much intelligent insight is indis- 
pensable to an appreciation of the result. 

Suppose a wild African, ignorant of any tool more com- 
plicated than his spear and hoe, to be transported sud- 
denly into one of our large New England manufactories ; 
he would be utterly dazed by the vast processes of card- 
ing, dying, spinning, weaving; and would doubtless go 
away firmly believing that this wonderful system of co- 
ordinated facts, allying many various modes of substance 
and properties to foreordained processes and results, must 
remain to him forever incomprehensible. Would he dream 
it possible, if left to himself, that he should ever be able 
to discover all these involved mysteries ? He would stand 
in consternation, if this task were assigned him, and very 
likely would believe that he had been set to cope with, the 
Evil Powers ; as men in the early days thought it hazard- 
ous to question the Unknown ; yet many a Yankee can 
perceive the operations of these fearful iron creatures as 
readily as he reads A, B, C ; and the African could edu- 
cate himself up to that point by steady culture. A 
shrewd mechanic, who had spent his life with his eyes 
open, in a paper mill, a foundry, or even a pin factory, 
if introduced into one of our great manufactories could 
perceive the relations and mutual adjustments in looms 
and spinning jennies at a glance, even though he had pre- 
viously acquired no just conception of their plan of oper- 
ations. The work of a large factory is no more compara- 
ble to the vast, intricate, most beautiful processes of 
universal Nature, than finite perceptive and constructive 
powers are comparable to the wisdom and power ade- 
quate to create a Universe and establish its limitless 
systems of coordinations ; yet, if man was made in the 
intellectual likeness of his Creator, he must learn, through 
the use of his own powers, little by little to comprehend 
even the higher modes and processes over which he himself 
can exercise little or no control. Thus, one and another 



1 8 The Text-Book. 

— physicist, philosopher, moralist, and the sharp-sighted 
of all classes, — has seen and announced principle after 
principle, cooperative in the grand Cosmos. The many 
have accepted and tested these truths for themselves ; and 
even the weakest mind is forced to perceive very much of 
the nature and operations of the vast number of things 
about him. When one can but compass the alphabet of 
any hitherto unknown language of things he may speedily 
become a proficient, for he finds the handwriting of the 
mother Nature as luminous as her own sunbeams. 





PERCEPTIVE FORCE. 

|F our text-book, in the present series of studies, 
is the actual universe, with its inherent, un- 
changing constitution as yet related to all changes, 
— to all modes of motion and emotion, and all processes 
of differentiation and development : given the universe to 
be studied, then each mind must perceive and appreciate 
it for himself. The so-called primary or first truths are 
patent, in their first forms of development, to the child 
who has hardly awakened into consciousness. They are 
as obvious to him as his own hands and feet, or his rattle- 
box. It would be as impossible to make him believe that 
the half of his rubber tooth-ring is the whole of it, as 
it would to convince the wisest geometrician that the 
whole is not greater than one of its parts. The princi- 
ples of things are at least as self-presenting and as self- 
evident as any other of the facts of existence. But the 
human mind is coordinated with many, if not all the facts 
of the present universe. 

The direct exercise of one's own Perceptive Force is 
held to be the only mode by which he can obtain a knowl- 
edge of anything. If this is affixing a grandly compre- 
hensive scope to Perception, yet the theory seems to be 
necessitated by the fact. The intellectual forces of the 
mind are, I think, broadly divided into two classes ; Per- 
ception^ which apprehends or cognizes the existing facts 
of the universe by direct intuition, and Conception, which 
modifies and transforms those facts in thought, and re- 
constructs them into its own original theories and hypoth- 
eses. The normal product of intellectual force is thought 



20 Perceptive Force. 

All intellectual activity, perception and conception, are 
included in the general act of thought ; and each mind 
produces its own thoughts as each body originates its own 
movements ; the number and variety of modes of motion 
produced by either being without limit ; but neither can 
act wholly in and of itself, but is closely related to all the 
other properties of being. 

Feeling is hardly a rational act, but rather the emotion 
of a rational actor ; and volition is but the choice of the 
rational person exercising it ; but thought is itself a ra- 
tional or intellectual act. The same generic distinction 
does not exist, therefore, between perception and concep- 
tion, as between thought and feeling, or thought and vo- 
lition ; yet the act of perceiving facts which really exist 
in the nature of things, and that of conceiving schemes 
which you suppose might exist, or which you think will 
best account for the facts which do exist, can never be 
confounded without the most hopeless confusion as to 
reality and hypothesis. The one is direct insight into the 
existing facts of nature — observation, pure, simple, and 
immediate, and nothing else ; the other is combining per- 
cepts into schemes of thought, which may or may not have 
a reality in things, but which are not perceived as therein 
existing. The product of perception is philosophy ; the 
product of conception is philosophizing ; there can be but 
one school of the former, there are many opposing schools 
of the latter. 

Perceiving is- an experience unquestioned, whatever be 
our theory of the fact. We may maintain, with pre-Reid- 
ish philosophers, that through the eye we perceive nothing 
but the images or representations of things ; with Reid 
himself that we perceive qualities and all material phe- 
nomena ; with Reid's Editor and Critic that we perceive 
nothing but reflected light ; or with the Belfast philoso- 
pher, 1 that we perceive the very substance of things ; 
1 Dr. McCosh, now of Princeton, New Jersey. 



Perceptive Force. 21 

yet we shall all equally admit the plain, undoubted luxury 
of vision. We see ! is the unanimous verdict. 

What sees? The blue or black eyes? or the mind 
which is looking through these living spectacles ? / see ! 
/ perceive ! here again there is general accord. Whether 
I perceive mental pictures, sunshine daguerreotypes, actual 
phenomena, or actual substance, yet it is the living /who 
is the acknowledged Perceiving Power. For the present, 
then, we assume the unity and personality of the perceiv- 
ing mind. 

Again, I perceive not through my eyes alone, but 
through all my other senses just as admittedly. I lay 
my hand upon the table in total darkness, yet by unaided 
touch I perceive all its dimensions, its form, its texture, 
its resistance to other bodies. Except as to color, I 
comprehend its properties better in every respect by 
touch than by the aid of sight alone. Thus, I perceive 
through my finger tips even more fully and reliably than 
through those wonderful telescopes called eyes. I also 
perceive sounds, odors, and flavors too subtle for eye or 
finger ; the whole living organism is eager to serve 
me, and its special senses are adapted to my special 
needs. The accompanying sensation is not the percep- 
tion, for the perception is an intellectual and cognitive 
act; is positive, apprehending and comprehending the 
object perceived by direct intuition. 

Most bodies are opaque to the human eye ; we see 
them from the outside, and if we would look into their 
hidden depths, we must divide them till we can bring the 
whole mass to the surface. We speak of seeing a peach 
or plum, though the eye rests only on the outline ; we per- 
ceive the form of the fruit, and the beautifully colored 
envelope in which the mass of juicy pulp and the kernel 
are concealed ; but we must open it, as we would open a 
sealed casket, if we would reach the mystery of its in- 
ternal structure. If divisibility were not one of the prop- 



22 Perceptive Force. 

erties ot matter, incarnated mind would be poorly adapted 
to cognize its existing constitution ; but depth and breadth 
can always be transformed into superficial area. Form, 
unless it is made to comprehend structure, can give but 
little aid to the student of natural science. Any attempt 
to classify by mere external resemblances can only pro- 
duce dry and thin epidermic results. When Cuvier and 
Von Baer each made the independent discovery, that all 
animals are constituted in accordance with one of four 
distinct plans of general structure, they did this by pene- 
trating into the complicated innermost recesses of large 
numbers of organisms, until their experience had become 
so comprehensive that they were each able, independently, 
to affirm that all known animals are actual realizations of 
one or other of these four definite plans of structure. 
These two discoverers, of different nationalities, about the 
same time, perceived and expressed essentially the same 
series of facts, which scientific men affirm to be verified in 
the animal kingdom, and if, perhaps, we except the Proto- 
zoa, to be complete and exhaustive of the objects classi- 
fied. There is a literal perception of the internal structure 
of animal organisms, obtained by aid of the simple process 
of divisibility — incarnated mind being able to perceive 
nothing material till it is brought to the surface where it 
can come into relations with some of the organs of 
sense. 

But there is something deeper in the percept than the 
mere fact of these bodily structures ; here are the four 
plans after which those structures have been made to 
grow. The mind perceives these, also, as actualized in 
their organisms, apprehending them intuitively, by virtue 
of its own intrinsic cognitive force. Ancient philosophers 
regarded perception as nearly coextensive with conscious- 
ness, in its broadest signification ; but the moderns have 
restricted it to the consciousness of material objects 
through the senses, and to self-consciousness. This is 



Perceptive Force. 23 

warping and narrowing the ordinary use of language ; the 
people speak, also, of seeing or perceiving principles and 
relations ; and they are right. If I can be said to per- 
ceive anything, I can perceive that two apples and two 
pears make four bodies, that the whole of an apple is 
greater than any of its parts, that extension is a neces- 
sary attribute of body ; these and all other actualized 
general principles or laws may be as clearly and positively 
under my vision as any material object can be. The prin- 
ciples are made persisting facts, through substances ; and 
can therefore be perceived in connection with them. As 
incarnated, I can only perceive matter, minds which are 
themselves embodied, and their several ratio?ial properties 
and relations ; but the percept is gained by penetration 
into the rational nature of their characteristics. There is 
no intervening representative, but a literal personal ac- 
quaintance with the object perceived. The organism is a 
transparency to the outlooking mind ; but in no sense 
does it represent the object. Neither does the mind repre- 
sent the objective to itself in thought, but in perception it 
sees the very object. 

When I attend to nothing but the relations of things, the 
likenesses and unlikenesses, specialties, or class character- 
istics, yet I literally perceive these facts just as the Creator 
has realized them in things. I have an immediate percep- 
tion of the principles of an equilateral triangle, also those of 
an isosceles and a scalene triangle. I perceive the differ- 
ences of plan in the three triangles, and the oneness of idea 
in the common scheme which includes them all. It is in 
and through things that I perceive these concepts to have 
become constitutional qualities of things. I perceive 
each of these schemes to be necessary parts of the gen- 
eral scheme, though, possibly, neither class has ever been 
perfectly exemplified in matter ; and although a represent- 
ative triangle, which should be neither equilateral, isosce- 
les, nor scalene, could not possibly be realized in matter. 



24 Perceptive Force. 

But my perception is not of the nature of a representation 
or mental picture. It is a direct apprehension of princi- 
ples, and these principles are realized more or less fully 
as modes or relations, resultant properties of almost every- 
thing. They are modes also of thought and of general 
mental operations. The percept or apprehension of ra- 
tional properties, is a real and positive somewhat, a cogni- 
tion or knowledge which becomes a definite possession of 
the mind which has obtained it. The percept is not an 
act in any strict sense ; the perception proper is the act 
and the percept the product of that act. Mind is 
the artist, but it obtains its materials from the object. 
This is true, also, of concepts ; but in these, it elaborates 
and remodels its materials till they misrepresent the ob- 
ject. In pure perception the apprehension is one with 
the object : it is the immediate cognition of the embodied 
truth : it does not represent the truth, but it is the literal 
principle introduced into the perceiving mind. 

A truth or principle, from its nature, which is thought, 
not substance, may exist as the same identical principle 
in any number of minds, and be actualized or substantial- 
ized in any number of substances. The principle is not, 
like substance, limited to one place and capable of being 
in the possession of but one person, but a thousand 
minds may each possess it at the same time : thus, a per- 
cept once obtained, the mind may turn to it at all times 
to find the truth presentatively, even in the absence of 
objective substance embodying it. It may not be always 
under the eye of consciousness ; yet when it is recalled 
and perceived it is a perception of the very principle it- 
self. Thus it is that all actual knowledge is intuition or 
immediate perception. " Memory," as Reid affirms, " is an 
immediate perception of things ; " but not, as he says, 
of " things past," for the principles of things do not pass 
away ; and memory is concerned only with the subjec- 
tive. 



Perceptive Force. 25 

Concepts are possible principles not actualized in things ; 
yet they, too, are rational plans, schemes, thoughts, which 
must be as indestructible as the mind which conceived 
them. All incidental and collateral proof is in favor of 
the position, that no thought ever is forgotten. In mo- 
ments of great peril, great excitement, or great mental 
quickening ,of any kind, every occurrence of the past, 
represented by its ideas, comes into consciousness. We 
can perceive no past events, and know no past events in 
the present \ but the events did once occur, and the mind, 
perceiving them, constructed its own thoughts of them, 
and these thoughts are imperishable ; they recur to us 
when the events have passed. These thoughts, in so far 
as they were pure percepts, were literal transcripts of con- 
cerned principles, retained always for direct perception. 
They were also correct recognitions of the changeable and 
contingent. 

It is necessary to assume that we are capable of per- 
ceiving substances and properties as they really are ; that 
is, we must rely upon the credibility of our powers of 
perception, since we can have nothing else to fall back 
upon • if these fail us, we are left in outer darkness ; but 
if they are trustworthy, our knowledge can be made reli- 
able. The possibility of philosophy, as a subjective sci- 
ence, turns upon this vital pivot, — the trustworthiness of 
Perceptive Force. Let us admit the mendacity of this 
Power, and all knowledge becomes an uncertainty if not 
an impossibility ; it ceases to be a knowledge. This can 
never be accepted without proof, and proof is impossible 
from the nature of the supposition. 

There is a favorite theory that we cannot perceive 
things as they are in themselves ; but only as they are in 
their relations to us. Doubtless things are to us as we 
perceive them to be, and not otherwise ; but we may per- 
ceive them to be as they really are in their own specific 
natures and outgrowing relations. If we can perceive 



26 Perceptive Force. 

them as they are related to ourselves, why not as related 
to each other ? Perception is a cognitive act, not a sen- 
sation. The above theory denies the essential nature of 
Perceptive Force, and robs it of its character of penetra- 
ting, simple insight. We can perceive nothing as existing 
without relations certainly, since nothing does so exist ; 
and we must perceive things as they are, otherwise the act 
is not perception. Perceptive force can invent nothing ; 
it can only read the existing somewhat, whether substance, 
property, or process. Whoever possesses perceptive power, 
in even the weakest degree, so far as he can perceive at 
all, must perceive correctly. We have no right to con- 
found this mental act with that of conception, which is the 
process of originating theories and presumed truths ; 
which may have no existence objectively. 

All direct intuition must necessarily carry with it its 
own evidence. I am here looking into the object and 
recognizing just how much I perceive of it or know about 
it. If I would perceive more, I must look further and 
deeper into the object, till I have fathomed its whole na- 
ture ; for, evidently, no perceptive knowledge can come 
to me at second hand ; and a question of experience can 
have no proof outside of itself. An adequate percept 
must involve a full apprehension and perfect knowledge 
of an object in its whole nature and in its remotest coor- 
dinations, not with ourselves alone, but with all things 
whatsoever. Such reach of perceptive power may belong 
only to the Infinite ; the finite act, if necessarily limited 
in 1 its range, is yet sustained by a persisting faculty which 
may be exercised without limit. 

The senses are used as eye-glasses, hence we must 
be mindful of their possible imperfections. While the 
material organism is called in to aid perception, the or- 
ganism itself should be perfect of its kind, in order to the 
certainty of perfect results ; and as it is doubtful whether 
the body is ever in absolute health, and under complete 



Perceptive Force. 



27 



subjection to the observer, all perception of material 
facts must be regarded as possibly faulty, and as almost 
certainly inadequate. The intervention of extra-organic 
material aids still further complicates the difficulty; yet 
because some eyes see objects double, some eye-glasses 
distort forms and discolor surfaces, and some atmos- 
pheres deceive as to distances, few have been disposed to 
quarrel with the percepts of the physical world ; but we 
have incomparably more ground for relying upon those 
of the self-luminous world of substantialized principles. 
Here there is often intrinsic evidence of the truth, till 
all room for doubt is absolutely withdrawn. 







CONSTRUCTIVE FORCE. 




HEWELL says of the early Greek philosophers, 
" As soon as they had introduced into their 
philosophy any abstract and general conceptions, 
they proceeded to scrutinize them by the internal light of 
the mind alone, without any longer looking abroad into 
the world of sense. They took for granted that philosophy 
must result from the relations of those notions which 
are involved in the common use of language, and they pro- 
ceeded to seek it by studying such notions. They ought to 
have reformed and fixed their usual conceptions by obser- 
vation ; they only analyzed and expanded them by reflec- 
tion ; they ought to have sought by trial, among the notions 
which passed through their minds, some one which admitted 
of exact application to facts ; they selected arbitrarily, and, 
consequently, erroneously, the notions according to which 
facts should be assembled and arranged ; they ought to 
have collected clear fundamental ideas from the world of 
things by inductive acts of thought ; they only derived 
results by deduction from one or other of their familiar 
conceptions." The same error has influenced, in a 
greater or less degree, all attempts at science both phys- 
ical and metaphysical, though the former, vastly more 
emancipated from this thralldom, has made comparatively 
greater progress. It is proper here to remark that all 
legitimate deductive reasoning is purely presentative ; one 
may perceive step by step the positions taken, every point 
as clear as light and as true as its antecedent ; for demon- 
stration, throughout its entire progress even to its final in- 
ference, is a process of immediate perception. The syllo- 



Constructive Force. 29 

gism is the golden circle of intuition ; but it is intuition 
of abstract principles, wholly without question as to 
whether these principles have been realized in nature or 
whether they have originated in the minds of men, having 
no actual existence in things. Herein is the great defect 
of logicians: they confound the constitution of things 
with their own concepts, and then reason thereon. Math- 
ematicians may do the same ; but from the simple nature 
of the truths with which they deal, there is little room for 
original theories, and so long as they confine themselves 
to pure mathematics, they can hardly go astray. The 
mathematical scheme of things is so clear and self-evi- 
dent, that in the earliest ages, at the very first awaken- 
ing of mind, there was little room here for doubt or dif- 
ference of opinion, and the science of pure mathematics 
made accurate progress to a completeness which is ad- 
mitted even at the present day ; philosophers have, there- 
fore, questioned whether mathematical truths were innate 
in the human mind, whether they were originated by it as 
baseless fancies are, or, like all other truths, whether they 
exist in and regulate the objective world. 

Here is proof of a unity of perceptive powers in all 
men, and of the success with which the Creator has re- 
alized his ideals in his works in that men may thus intuit 
the simplest leading mathematical principles unerringly ; 
and may go on elaborating less obvious truth in the 
light of their own minds with absolute infallibility. In- 
deed from the nature of mind, if deduction be absolutely 
true in its premises, it must be absolutely correct in its 
conclusions ; but let philosophers attempt an application 
of mathematical truth or of general logic to any science, 
hoping thereby to arrive at unperceived facts by deduction, 
and it is then indispensable that they should perceive in 
things with perfect accuracy, in some cases even with 
entire completeness, the original data from which they 
take their point of departure. This it is difficult if not 



30 Constructive Force. 

often impossible to do, and therefore, deduction has be- 
come the most direct road to error; its remote conclu- 
sions, however demonstrated, intuited, and proved beyond 
possibility of cavil in the light of their own evidence, 
cannot be accepted safely till they are re-tested by existing 
objective facts. Early astronomers, assuming false data 
touching some of the simplest movements of the heavenly 
bodies, drew widely erroneous but perfectly demonstrable 
conclusions as to the entire system of astronomy ; and 
men have logically proved every conceivable dogma which 
has ever been promulgated among mankind. Truth, then, 
to be accepted, must not only be perceived as evident, 
but as an existing element of nature, and true in its re- 
lations to other actualized principles. The book to be 
studied is the universe as it is, where all truth is clearly 
written out in its proper order, and occupying its own 
place ; but since many of the characters are deeply hid- 
den within their cloddish covers, and difficult to decipher 
when found, deduction is a beautiful art by which we cre- 
ate possible truth for ourselves \ and, comparing these 
with the record, we may find, to our intense delight, that 
our thoughts are as God's thoughts, and that we are 
verily made in the intellectual image of the great Orig- 
inator. 

Hypotheses are rational scaffoldings which one may 
erect to enable him to observe from a new plane of vision : 
they may aid him in looking higher or deeper or farther 
then he otherwise could. Let us distinctly admit the fact 
that our powers are capable both of perceiving what is, 
and of constructing schemes of what possibly might be. 
This originative or constructive force is the mental power 
which we are now especially considering : it is conception 
as distinguished from perception, and includes fancies, 
imaginations, judgments, comparisons, inferences, argu- 
ments, proofs, notions, hypotheses, — every rational prod- 
uct, in short, except direct immediate percepts. The 



Constructive Force, 31 

self-acting energy in mind will not rest in the steady un- 
originative process of pure perception. It possesses, also, 
a constructive intellectual force, and the exercise of this 
power is ever varied and fascinating. 

Fancy originates an endless wealth of mental pictures, 
in emulation of the countless variety of material objects ; 
producing at will not merely new combinations, but orig- 
inal and even impossible phantoms, often most beautiful 
and bewitching. This is the nearly irresponsible exercise 
of constructive power, the almost involuntary use of pent- 
up, irrepressible energy, which in children is riotous for 
exercise : they are no more content with merely perceiving 
the object-world, than with the patented amount of physi- 
cal activity prescribed by mammas and nurses. The young 
mind peoples its own kaleidoscopic play-room as the 
little body revels in the inconvenient restlessness of per- 
petual motion. 

Imagi?iation culls the principles of things and plucks 
its materials from thence ; but it builds up its new worlds, 
if not with the same perpetual eagerness, yet with even 
more cordial and appreciative love. It seeks, also, to 
express its concepts, giving them outward being tangible 
to others — a body, as it were, to the rational soul. Thus 
Powers originated the concept of his Greek Slave and 
embodied it in marble ; and Longfellow created Evange- 
line and incarnated his thought in language. 

Probable hypotheses, as provisional suppositions, — at- 
tempts at approximation to the truth, to be tested and 
either accepted or set aside, — are doubtless inevitable. 
Mind gains command of its powers by this ceaseless ac- 
tivity of personal thought ; but as the mature man ceases 
to gymnasticize merely as an occupation, and exerts him- 
self towards the securing of definite, desired ends, so 
speculation belongs preeminently to the childhood of sci- 
ence. Matured science has planted itself on more stable 
foundations ; and is learning to be more content with the 



32 Constructive Force. 

study of existing facts. To the physicist who makes his 
hypotheses his ordinary working tools, they are of incal- 
culable value ; for they are good tools to work with, but 
poor material to work upon. In pure rational science, 
the chances are that one ultimately mistakes his hypo- 
thetical platforms for natural and legitimate foundations. 
Logic proves to him how strong and inter-dependent his 
hypothesis can be made at every point, till he really 
thinks it should be identical with the actual system of 
things : he would create the universe after this model un- 
doubtedly ! 

Philosophy has been literally despoiled by the fool- 
hardy enterprise of her handmaid, Logic. Seamstress by 
vocation, Logic should employ herself only in making up 
garments ; but she interferes arrogantly in the production 
of the raw material, and the result is manifest in her num- 
berless shining webs of mental shoddy. According to the 
great Anglo-Saxon godfather of the mantua-maker, Logic 
is properly concerned only with the laws of thought as 
thought; but, blinded by her autocratic dicta, he also has 
been led to confound her logical concepts with pure per- 
cepts. This vital error has crept in everywhere ; — think- 
ers, now, as in the earliest ages, obtaining a supply of 
fragmentary half-facts, retire into some shaded mental 
corner and clamor vigorously for Logic to make them up. 
She does make them up ; and with a thread of her own so 
strong that it absolutely cannot break or wear away ! One 
is intoxicated by the consecutive, business-like tact with 
which she adjusts each part to all the others in an admi- 
rably symmetrical whole. 

" Long live my system ! " cries the philosopher, with 
enthusiasm ; but new facts in the actual constitution of 
things are so many remorseless shears when brought in 
contact with the system. Logic patches and patches, until, 
at last, some vital breach is made, and the system drops 
in pieces. Here is an epitome of the history of specula- 



Constructive Force. 33 

tion. System after system had its perceived and incon 
testable truths ; but they were elaborated too much. 
Logic is invincible only when she uses her needle in the 
service of materials as enduring as her own thread. 

Originality, in any valuable sense of that term, is not 
possible in philosophy. Who talks of an original Colum- 
bus, Linnaeus, or Agassiz ? The philosopher must stand 
by the universe as it is, precisely as the historian should 
by the events which have been ; but while the latter deals 
with second-hand facts, and balances probabilities, the 
former should be an eye-witness to all he affirms, if not 
he will be but a blind guide. There is genius manifested 
in seizing upon the right facts ; and genius in ordering a 
lucid arrangement of materials, and in felicitous modes 
of expression ; but here its province ends. It would be 
as easy for us to think the substance of an apple into exist- 
ence as it would to think the law of gravitation into opera- 
tion, and as easy to create the material apple-tree as to 
create any of its already established modes and processes. 
Then, since all existing facts are beyond being tampered 
with by us, of what value are the systems of all the bril- 
liant thinkers who are recreating the schemes of things 
in their mental laboratories, except as mental gymnasi- 
ums for the benefit of themselves and their pupils ? One 
might as reasonably expect to learn the manners and cus- 
toms of the Asiatics by blowing himself vigorously with a 
palm-leaf turned into a Yankee fan, as to learn the es- 
tablished nature of things through the ingeniously elab- 
orated systems of the rival schools. The race has indeed 
made most wonderful and immense progress ; and meta- 
physical discipline has given to many minds a marvelous 
sharpness and subtilty of perception and reasoning pow- 
ers, as all exercise develops the appetency by which it 
is produced ; but the vital hindrance to progress in as- 
sured knowledge has always been, not so much in the 
intricacy and difficulty of the truths to be apprehended, 



34 Constructive Force. 

as in the fallacy that we can conceive and elaborate the prin- 
ciples of an existing universe by subjective processes of 
reasoning and reflection. As we ourselves are coordinated 
parts of this universe, subjects of its laws, constituted by 
its principles, and made, apparently, with a strong men- 
tal likeness to the great Originator, even these elaborative 
processes have not led us wholly astray ; but there is 
abundant evidence that no one has yet been eminently 
successful in "thinking" again the original scheme of 
things, or in " reasoning " it within the proper bounds. 
In the beginning, He actualized his own ideals — at least 
there they are to-day and forever, as matter of fact ; the 
Philosopher needs to be sharp-eyed and simple-tongued, 
that is all. 

It cannot be that the method in philosophy must deter- 
mine the system. Method determines everything only in 
system-making. If one is intent on discovering existing 
facts, his method becomes wonderfully simple : he begins 
by observing things, and ends by stating his observations. 
Nature's facts are not strung like beads on a cable of 
logic, and liable to be disarranged or entangled ; it makes 
very little difference what one begins to observe ; he may 
look where he will, at whatever class of facts he pleases, and 
may state his discoveries as they are made, with no fear 
of discrepancies, certain, if his perceptive powers may 
be relied upon, that he must be able to perceive realities. 
Of course he will make grievous mistakes ; he must first 
slough off his prejudices and educational traditions, for 
if he has been taught logical philosophy ', he will be forever 
comparing, reasoning, drawing inferences, systematizing, 
and attempting originality with all the facility of acquired 
habit. A preconceived theory will adduce abundant evi- 
dence of its truthfulness from most unexpected sources 
and in perfect sincerity. It would be unfair to be unfor- 
giving of educational mistakes ; our limitations must be 
charitably remembered ! 




PERCEPTION DISTINGUISHED FROM CON- 
CEPTION 

[HEN the mind perceives only partially, it may 
then unconsciously misstate and misrepresent 
the fact, because it instinctively attempts to sup- 
ply deficiencies ; and is able by its innate constructive 
force, from the material already obtained, to create com- 
pleted notions which seem consistent and truthful to it- 
self, and which it easily but indiscriminately confounds 
with pure percepts. I am desirous to carefully indicate 
the differences between these two modes of mental opera- 
tion and their results. 

Perception presupposes an object to be cognized ; and 
whether that object be simple or complex, substantial or 
affectional, material or mental, concrete or general, con- 
tingent or necessary, relative or absolute, the percept is 
nothing but a simple intelligent apprehension of the ob- 
ject. Conception, on the other hand, does not suppose 
an object to be directly cognized : it requires only objec- 
tive raw material (if I may indicate the analogy between 
intellectual and mechanical processes of construction), 
which it makes up into original notions, ideas, or hypoth- 
eses — concepts of its own. It does this by processes 
of thought, fancies, imaginations, suppositions, arguments, 
and decisions of its own \ by these various modes it can 
construct an endless diversity of widely differing results. 
The concept is not usually at one with any existing fact, 
though it may be so, as the constitutions of mind and 
matter have evidently the same origin ; the laws of 
thought, therefore, if properly followed, will sometimes 
run parallel with the laws of things. I may conceive a 



36 Perception distinguished from Conception. 

truth before I can perceive it ; but I shall not know whether 
or not it be an existing, objective truth, until I can perceive 
whether it is or is not such by really cognizing the object 
to which it pertains. If the truth be a general law of 
things, as the law of gravitation, I may trace it in many 
of its modes of operation ; may determine its action 
under different conditions by mathematical calculations, 
and then carefully observe whether or not these compu- 
tations are borne out by facts, as mathematical physicists 
have done so marvelously with the laws of motion ; or, 
if the truth be one admitting of tangible quantitative 
demonstration, I may weigh and measure with the nicest 
accuracy, and under the widest variety of conditions, 
as all practical physicists are perpetually doing. But the 
majority of rational truths are not quantitative but qualita- 
tive ; they are truths of kind or intension, not of amount 
or extension, and as they can be neither weighed nor meas- 
ured by relative gravity, or numbers, or time, or space, 
or any quantity ; they are dealt with by comparison, anal- 
ogy, argument, and demonstration. Here is room for abun- 
dance of fallacy and honest mistake ; and the only remedy 
is in a pure intellectual insight into the very nature of the 
modes and principles under consideration. That we are 
endowed with some degree of this perceptive force, it is 
necessary to assume, nor can we doubt it, any more than 
we can doubt the fact of our personal existence itself, 
for it belongs to the same class of truths — it is itself a 
question of pure and simple intuition. 

By what tests, then, may we distinguish percepts from 
concepts ? 

1. The intellectual operations by which they are ac- 
quired are dissimilar. Apprehending an existing, actual 
truth, requires a widely different mental exercise from 
originating a possible truth. The one is observation, re- 
quiring an effort to look into the nature of the object 
under consideration, while the other is constructive and 



Perception distinguished from Conception. 37 

demands the building up and fortifying of a position by 
argument or otherwise. In the one case we shall find 
ourselves compelled to study the object, till we can 
fathom its nature by steady and direct insight; in the 
other, from such ideas as we have already acquired, we 
elaborate our mental structure with the same parental love 
for the result, that the artist feels in the construction of 
his handicraft. If we attend to the rational process by 
which we acquire any thought, we can thus determine the 
nature of the thought itself. 

This is the subjective side of the test ; we may apply it 
on the objective side also ; and this is necessary, since 
our theories are so often educational or the accepted con- 
cepts of other minds like our own ; or they have been 
held so long that we have forgotten the processes by 
which we obtained them. 

2. If a pure percept be held up to its object we shall 
find it reaffirmed as the exact intellectual apprehension of 
that object; while deeper penetration into the nature and 
relations of a professed object will either convert a concept, 
logically obtained, into a direct percept, as it sometimes 
may, or the real object will give evidence that its pre- 
sumed counterpart is only a sham. 

3. Self-evidence has been given as the primary test of 
an intuitive principle. If by this is meant that when a 
principle is perceived to be an existing property of things, 
it must then be accepted on its own testimony, this obvi- 
ously is correct. But if, as sometimes appears, it is 
meant that a rational principle must be accepted as truth 
on the intrinsic evidence of the principle itself, as an ab- 
stract or logical principle, I entirely demur. An incred- 
ible amount of error has arisen from just this source — 
from the failure to discriminate between the self-evidence 
of a rational principle, as a lucid possible principle, and 
its self-evidence as an existing property of Being. Many 
propositions seem extremely clear, probable, and reason* 



38 Perception distinguished from Conception. 

able 5 we perceive their faultless internal harmony, their 
unanswerable logic, and even their just relations to many 
accepted truths, we are charmed with their innate intellect- 
ual grandeur : they are symmetrical in themselves, and are 
self-evidently credible ; but we cannot infer, therefore, 
that they are realized and self-evident in the objective 
universe. We can perceive all classes of ideas : we reason 
about both concepts and percepts continually ; and draw 
logical inferences from them both, often without discrim- 
inating one class from the other ; and thus it is, that in 
philosophy, psychology, moral, religious, political, and so- 
cial sciences, we have only so many systems of mingled 
logical truth and equally logical error. Here, appar- 
ently, it is method which determines everything; only 
plant yourself at the right point of vision, and everything 
around you becomes self-luminous at once ; but directly 
opposite theories, from their directly opposite stand-points, 
are equally lucid and equally self-evident. They have 
some of their deepest roots, too, in things ; but, alas, ob- 
viously not all of them. There can be but one existing 
actualized philosophy, but one veritable science of psychol- 
ogy, one code of morals, one, both absolute and relative, 
religion, one political science, innate in the structure of 
related minds ; and one social science, equally grounded 
in social natures. Principles must become the self-evi- 
dent, literal properties of Being, and be perceived as 
really existing in the innate constitutions of their sub- 
stances, or all their apparent self-evidence is only artificial 
light which can go but a very little way towards illumin- 
ating the actual universe. If man is really endowed with 
a reliable power or intellectual force for apprehending the 
nature of things, and for discriminating between the real 
and imitative, then ontology, including the ontology of 
rational concepts, which are the realities of finite con- 
structive thought, is the whole of universal philosophy ; 
and is a science which may be acquired by pure and sim- 
ple perception. 



Perception distinguished from Conception. 39 

4. Necessity of belief has been adduced as evidence of 
an intuitive truth. If the truth is one of such primary 
character that the necessity of belief is positive and un- 
conditioned, depending upon no other truth for corrob- 
orative support, like the truths of personal existence and 
the existence of the external world, the necessity of the 
belief is an evidence of its truth. Nothing but a theory 
upheld by logic can shake such a belief, and even that 
can never destroy it. But the necessity for believing 
many things is conditioned upon the belief in certain 
other things which stand to them in the relation of ante- 
cedents ; thus, the ultimate question again is, whether or 
not the necessity of belief lies in the nature of things. 
In short, in every attempt to adduce tests, such as " In- 
tuitive truths are incomprehensible, that is, we perceive 
that they are, without being able to perceive how or why 
they are;" "Intuitive truths are simple as opposed to 
complex," etc. we always return again to the same issue 
— the question of fact as to the nature of things ; which 
is itself dependent upon the credibility of our percep- 
tions. 

Perceptive Force must have a vastly wider range of vis- 
ion than has generally been assigned to it. Conception has 
been regarded as the process of abstract thinking which 
gives generic ideas — which classifies and comprehends 
under a general term everything which is common to 
every individual of the species. Thus the conception of 
the genus tree would be neither a first perception nor yet 
the mental reproduction or representation of such a per- 
cept ; but it would be connecting together, in thought, 
the common qualities of trees into one general idea, 
which should stand for all trees equally well. But are 
generic ideas necessarily obtained by this elaborative 
process ? 

Conceiving anew the general scheme of any great class 
of natural objects ! No hyperbole of Irish witticism seems 



40 Perception distinguished from Conception. 

to me more naive from its innocent suggestion of impos- 
sibilities. How is it certain that one has quite hit the 
true scheme, unless he can perceive the existing plan with 
which to compare it? Is it likely that all thinkers are 
to agree in even the essentials of the many schemes 
which each is thus compelled to originate or to accept on 
trust from his neighbor ? Imagine a three-years old baby, 
for example, thinking out the generic scheme of so simple 
a thing as a leaf. It must be at once comprehensive and 
definite, must equally include the stiff needles of the 
pines and the webs of broadcloth on the palms \ the 
ragged shreds on the pin-oak and the smooth flounces of 
the tulip, the green silk of the aspens and the yellow 
flannels of the old mullens. Can you believe he is able 
to think anything comparable to this, when he does not 
yet know that three and two make five ? Yet he will tell 
you, without hesitation, that each of these widely different 
objects is a leaf. The explanation is simple : he looks 
through his young eyes and sees the material leaves, each 
the standing record of an actualized plan, which is com- 
mon to them all ; he recognizes a similarity of conditions 
and of functions ; it really exists, and he perceives that it 
does ; for it is no more hidden, or obscure, or difficult to 
be seen than are the leaves themselves, with their varied 
conditions and modifications. An older person might 
express the common properties and relations by a variety 
of words, while the child has but one word, leaf; yet that 
means something definite to him which he accepts on his 
own experience. He has personal observation enough to 
assure him there is a common bond which makes them all 
leaves. If a knowledge of generic terms is to be gained 
by elaborative processes of thought, this necessitates dis- 
ciplined mental labor, yet the great fact remains that the 
child will lisp out the generic names of strange cats, and 
dogs, and trees, and horses ; and he is no more at a loss 
how to classify most objects of his acquaintance than his 



Perception distinguished from Conception. 41 

father is. Surely he perceives the likeness of type, per- 
ceives the actualized common principle, and readily as- 
sociates the iiame given him with the fact' which it repre- 
sents. 

The fundamental error of not discriminating percepts 
from concepts enters into many attempts at classification, 
creating endless confusion as to whether it is the province 
of philosophy to classify the former or the latter. The 
science of the actual can have to do with human concepts, 
only in so far as they evidence the nature of the. mind 
which originates them. It is with the veritable principles 
of things that Philosophy is primarily concerned. These 
she would explain to us, classified and systematized ; but 
it is no more Philosophy who is to do this classifying, than 
it is she who is to create the principles to be classified. 
The Creator has systematized, not his own handiwork 
merely, but his own head work also ; He has not only 
classified substances, but He has classified the principles 
by which substances are constituted. What, then, is left 
for science but to take careful note of the fact ? 

All the generic ideas comprehended in general terms, 
such as triangle, parallel lines, horse, tree, mountain, 
world, solar system, or man, are contained entire in each 
individual of the class. A child, who had never seen any 
tree except one isolated maple, might obtain from it as 
full and correct a perception of the genus tree as he 
could have after he had seen a hundred oaks, willows, and 
pines ; for everything which belongs to the generic tree is 
in the maple, and of course, may be perceived there. It 
is the individual and specific differences which he is un- 
able to see in the maple alone ; for these are not in the 
maple. In the individual we perceive the peculiarities 
which do not belong to the class. 

Nature creates the likeness and analogy between the 
different species. She herself compares them • we have 
only to note the resemblances and differences. We may 



42 Perception distinguished from Conception. 

get both the specific and the general in the concrete ; as 
in the solitary maple ; then we may lay aside the individual 
and attend only to what is common in the species or 
genus, then to what is common in all bodies, then to what 
is common in all known substances ; but we might pos- 
sibly obtain as complete and positive a knowledge of 
substance per se, from one maple-tree, as from all bodies 
and minds collectively. I do not say that each person 
actually does get his knowledge of the general and uni- 
versal in the concrete ; but I affirm that the intrinsic 
nature of the universal, and everything except the fact of 
the universality of its actualization in things, may be per- 
ceived in the individual : and many, if not most minds, 
apparently perceive almost everything in the concrete. 
It seems to be the primary and normal process of knowl- 
edge-gathering. 

Abstraction is the converging of attention upon the one 
property in question, to the exclusion of everything else. 
In classification of principles, subjectively, we fix the 
attention upon the given property till we perceive it dis- 
tinctly, then we look for it in the wide range of objects 
in which it inheres, and putting aside all else we proclaim 
that nature has classified these widely differing objects by 
giving them, in this regard, an actually identical consti- 
tution. Classification, then, is the abstraction of the common 
modes of things through perception. As each object has 
many and various modes, of course it can be variously 
classified \ and yet each classification be merely the prod- 
uct of so many differing yet veritable perceptions. The 
secret of a valuable classification would lie in the selection 
of fundamental and distinctive characteristics. 

Why so much credit has been given to the constructive, 
that is, the reflective and elaborative processes of mind in 
abstraction and classification, it would be difficult to say. 
It is evident that perceiving the coordinations and ramifi- 
cations of general principles, is only a more far-sighted ex- 



Perception distinguished from Conception. 43 

ercise of direct rational perception. Classification, to be 
successfully, systematically, and extensively pursued, only 
requires clear, disciplined, and penetrating insight, with 
the ability to perceive relations and coordinations with 
as much distinctness as we can perceive the things re- 
lated and coordinated — for all relations and correla- 
tions are as veritable a part of the actual universe as 
any other. There must be an eye to real resemblances 
and differences, even of a most subtle and recondite 
character, and a gift of concentration to enable one men- 
tally to abstract properties from their coordinations. All 
this only requires Perceptive Force of a high order, not 
differing in kind from that of a less efficient neighbor ; 
but broader in degree, either from native endowments or 
culture, or both combined. Of course, such a mind must 
not be wanting in judgment, the power of reasoning, or 
any other phase of Constructive Modes, for the two great 
modes of force are so practically allied as to be almost 
inseparable in every mental act. They cooperate in pro- 
ducing all the best results of mental effort, inasmuch as 
they are both modes of force pertaining to one indivisible 
mind, and are mutually adapted to the furtherance of its 
intellectual needs ; yet it is by Perception only that we 
can actually perceive or know the existing universe. 

Whoever would penetrate deeply into a system of truths 
like those around us, which are at once simple, wide-reach- 
ing, beneficent, and instinct with a moral sublimity which 
no words may ever express, must himself possess a noble 
purpose and a large perseverance. Above all, he must 
be content to remain a simple learner, humble and self- 
forgetful — the recipient and not the donor. The eyes are 
servants of the heart, and whatever we look for, we shall 
find, if nature has it among her treasures. 

H. D. Thoreau, one of the clear-sighted naturalists, 
says of himself: "In my botanical rambles, I find that, 
first, the idea or image of a plant occupies my thought, 



44 Perception distinguished from Conception. 

though it may seem very foreign to this locality, — no 
nearer than Hudson's Bay, — and for weeks or months I 
go thinking of it, and expecting it, unconsciously, and at 
length I surely see it. This is the history of my finding 
a score or more of rare plants, which I could name. A 
man sees only what concerns him. A botanist, absorbed 
in the study of grasses, does not distinguish the grandest 
pasture oaks. He, as it were, tramples down oaks un- 
wittingly in his walk, or at most sees only their shadows." 
If this is true of the material, which is forced upon us 
sharply through every sense, how much more true of the 
rational, which has no reacting elbows to thrust out at us 
in mute appeal for recognition ! All the noblest pearls of 
the creative thought are laid carefully away in their well- 
protected cabinets. 

When one can fully recognize the fact that there can be 
no other Teacher than the great Author who wrote the 
work he is studying, and that all others must be mere 
expounders, he will find in everything traces of the loving 
mother teaching her children by the most winning pro- 
cesses ; wooing them to learn by holding out all her beau- 
tiful forms and colors ; her buds and blossoms, and birds, 
and ever beautiful changes ; but he will find, also, the 
inexorable purpose of the earnest Father, who, laying his 
principles deeply and unalterably beyond all created in- 
tervention, is thus ever rigorously but tenderly enforcing 
upon him the need of an earnest and most scrupulous 
application which alone can bring him an adequate re- 
ward. 




WE PERCEIVE THE REAL OBJECT. 

|REVIOUS to the time of Reid, it seems to have 
been almost universally held by philosophers, 
that, in Perception, it is not the real and literal 
object which is itself directly observed ; but that we per- 
ceive the representation, idea, or image of the object alone. 
The representative somewhat was supposed to be either 
mental or extra-mental, according to the harmonic require- 
ments of each peculiar theory. There can be no better 
illustration than this of the results of too much reasoning 
and speculation upon simple questions of fact; which 
must, in the nature of things, be decided upon the direct 
evidence of their own testimony ; and by each perceiving 
mind for itself. A variety of highly ingenious, plausible 
hypotheses were constructed, in all of which it was held 
that we cannot immediately perceive real objects of any 
character whatever; whether of bodies, minds, or their 
properties. These hypotheses were, one or other of them, 
accepted almost without question by all the thinkers > 
possibly because such ingenious theories seemed so learned 
and self-evident that it was an intellectual delight to be 
able to appreciate them, and to feel that one had risen in 
intelligence above the masses, who still held implicitly to 
the certainty that they could directly and really perceive 
the very things themselves. 

Reid says : " We have here a remarkable conflict be- 
tween two contradictory opinions wherein all mankind 
are engaged. On the one side stand all the vulgar, who 
are unpracticed in philosophical researches, and guided 
by the uncorrupted primary instincts of nature. On the 



46 We perceive the Real Object. 

other side, stand all the philosophers, ancient and mod- 
ern ; every man, without exception, who reflects. In this 
division, to my great humiliation, I find myself classed 
with the vulgar." 

On all questions of direct fact like this, it is pretty safe 
to stand side by side with the unprejudiced masses whose 
testimony is of necessity disinterested, they having no 
theory to support. An appeal to the general conscious- 
ness to give the simple narrative of its daily and hourly 
perceptions, is always of immense value ; it is safer to 
credit it on any and every question of direct face-to-face 
perception, than to turn for aid to the constructive talents 
of the very wisest in all the ages. They may explain 
away the testimony of one's own very eyesight, till he 
really will come to doubt the assurances of his immediate 
vision. It is like being in the presence of a company of 
wonderful conjurers who show you so many impossible 
marvels, and who overturn the stability of nature with such 
astonishing facility, that you are left powerless in their 
hands, and, for the moment, are utterly at a loss whether 
to decide that everything which you see is real or whether 
everything is only a seeming. 

After such an ordeal, one must unlearn all his former 
opinions and begin to look out upon the world again with 
the simplicity of a little child ; he will see objects about 
him on every hand, and as he stands in their uncovered 
presence, as it were, face to face with them, he can have 
no doubt that he is everywhere looking at real things. To 
the skeptic's argument, that he cannot know there is an 
external world because we cannot directly perceive things, 
but only their representatives, he can answer boldly : " I 
do perceive things. The external world is here, and I 
am looking at it. I see both its physical traits, and its 
pure rational principles as existing and acting properties. 
I perceive all these directly, presentatively, and with pos- 
itive assurance." 



We perceive the Real Object. 47 

The affirmation of direct perception has its weight even 
among philosophers ; theories of the necessary interven- 
tion of mental modifications, or of any other similitudes 
in the act of perception, belong now either to the dead 
past or to essentially un-English minds, who seem to be 
defective in matter of fact directness of insight. A rep- 
resentative perfume from a Lily of the Valley is unattain- 
able to the most artistic Anglo-Saxon imagination; but 
the real perfume comes to us and presents itself. Ever 
since the founder of Scottish Philosophy arose, asserting 
the right of the thinkers to perceive things themselves, 
and not their mere effigies, the thinkers also have perceived 
certain classes of things, at least, just like alPthe com- 
monest mortals. Thus much of progress has been made : 
it is an important step towards the general admission, that 
we can perceive objects not merely as they are in their co- 
ordinations with ourselves, but as they are in themselves 
and in their various other relations also. 



r 





WE PERCEIVE THE SUBSTANCE OF 
BODIES. 

[|E have been taught that we can never perceive 
substance ; that what we really perceive is only 
| ' phenomena, the changing modes and manifes- 
tations of substance ; while the substance itself, standing 
under these phenomena, is known by us to exist only 
through a discursive process of reasoning. 

Tell a downright practical man, who is looking at a 
rose-bush with its wealth of leaves and flowers, that he 
does not directly perceive the very substance of the rose- 
bush which is now present before him, and he will mock 
you. " Look here ! " he cries ; " I rend off this branch, 
and I see the very grain and texture of the wood from 
bark to pith. I crush these leaves ; the whole of them 
lies here in the palm of my hand. Here is the very and 
actual substance of them all ; do you tell me that I don't 
see it ? Tell me, then, that everything in life is deception ; 
for if I do not see the very ground-work of this rose-bush, I 
can see nothing whatever. I'd be a Punch and Judy in a 
puppet-show sooner than a man made only to be cheated ! " 

Your only resource now is to confound him with orac- 
ular sayings. 

" Matter is incognizable in itself." — Aristotle. 

" The objects of perception are the various qualities of 
bodies." — Reid. 

" Mind and matter, as known or knowable, are only two 
different series of phenomena or qualities ; mind and mat- 
ter as unknown and unknowable, are the two different 
substances in which these two different series of phenom- 
ena are supposed to inhere." — Hamilton. 



We perceive the Substance of Bodies. 49 

" The essence, the being in itself, whatever it be, whether 
of bodies or of God, or of the soul, falls not under con- 
sciousness." — Cousin. 

" The connection of quality and substance is not per- 
ceived but is thought" — Hickok. 

" Matter as opposing our muscular energies, being im- 
mediately present to consciousness in terms of force ; and 
its occupancy of space being known by an abstract of 
experiences originally given in terms of force; it follows 
that forces, standing in certain correlations, form the 
whole content of our idea of Matter." — Spencer. 

Shall not the practical man bow to this array of thought, 
attested by some of the highest names which have ever 
been joined to human authority? Poor, clear-sighted, 
untaught man ! Let him learn to distrust his own senses, 
since through them all he gets the same positive affirma 
tion, that he sees, touches, and tastes the very substance of 
bodies, as variously modified. 

Here is an apple ! I hold on my hand the whole of its 
substance with all its innate properties. I taste it ; does 
this something which is related to my sense of taste, and 
is called flavor, — does this something which affects me, 
inhere in a substance or in no substance ? If in a sub- 
stance, then I must eat the substance to obtain the flavor ; 
if in no substance, then it inheres in nothing and here 
is a phenomenon with nothing underlying it. Can any- 
thing be more evident than that this bit of matter which 
is extended to nearly the size of my fist, of a roundish 
shape, a ruddy color, a delightful fragrance, and a pleas- 
ant taste — substance wedded to special properties in a 
common unity — together comprise this apple; and that 
this apple with its definite size, shape, color, fragrance, 
flavor, and other properties or modes is so much organized 
substance, which I directly perceive. To my great gratifi- 
cation, I find the authority of my consciousness to this 
effect also confirmed by the catholic testimony of the vast 



5<3 We perceive the Substance of Bodies. 

host of unprejudiced observers. If human Perceptive 
Force, close and immediate like this in its action, cannot, 
without a learned elaboration of the Reasoning Powers, 
distinguish the grand kohinoor, real existence, from a paste 
bauble representing it, we might be expected to eschew 
its testimony altogether. 

But at least one accredited philosopher of genius and 
position does maintain that we can perceive actual sub- 
stance, immediately and literally. This opinion of Dr. 
McCosh came to me as the shadow of a great rock in a 
weary land, after I had for years maintained the same in 
public and private ; seeking everywhere in vain for cor- 
roborating testimony. I have rested in its shade ; finding 
strength therein for a more trusting reliance on intuition 
during all the subsequent investigation of kindred top- 
ics. 

We cannot, indeed, perceive substance except as en- 
dowed with properties ; for it does not otherwise exist, 
at least in our universe. Properties are forces and 
capacities, modes of present existence and action ; and to 
perceive the property is to perceive the somewhat pos- 
sessing and manifesting this property. We can touch a 
solid body, though we cannot touch a substance without 
body and solidity ; but neither can we touch the abstract 
principles of extension and solidity. Evidently, then, we 
touch the real substance as extended and endowed with 
resisting force. 

Smiles, dimples, and frowns are not wholly material 
facts j yet can there be smile, dimple, or frown and no face 
producing it ? Do we perceive the smile alone ? On 
the contrary, we perceive the face in the act of smiling, the 
substance in its present mode of a smiling face. Leaves 
and acorns are not' the whole of an oak ; the oak is not 
the whole of matter, and matter may not be the whole of 
substance ; but when we perceive leaves, acorns, oak, and 
bodies generally, are we to believe that they are not real 



We perceive the Substance of Bodies. 5 1 

substance thus modified ? How can they be merely the 
attitudes, changes, and processes of a something itself 
unseen ? 

Pure principles alone, as extension, divisibility, form, 
color, or all properties comprehending the total of actual- 
ized principles, cannot be the sole components of sub- 
stance per se ; but substance constituted by these coor- 
dinated and actualized principles must comprise the whole 
of existing or created substance. The determinate some- 
what which is literally extended in this apple, which reacts 
when acted upon, resisting pressure and manifesting so- 
lidity, which has this color, this form, this fragrance, this 
weight j which is divisible, and which, in short, possesses 
a series of adapted properties, is the whole of the bit 
of substance constituting this apple. Substance, with its 
realized properties, we may directly perceive. It is not 
necessary here to dwell upon the influence and coopera- 
tion of the organism in producing sensation ; it is enough 
that there is something in the object, which, by being 
modified in the organism, is thus perceived ; something to 
be tasted as pleasant rather than disagreeable, to be noted 
as ruddy instead of black \ and generally to be perceived 
as affecting us in some particular manner and not other- 
wise. The organism has its own material, quantitative 
relations with other bodies, and the mind must study these 
as objective facts, precisely as it studies everything else 
which does not belong to its own personality. 

If we can perceive anything touching unconstituted, 
uncreated, absolute substance, we must do so by abstrac- 
tion, by dropping out of view the existing nature of 
things and looking directly at the substance which remains 
in its own uncreated integrity. It would be premature 
to attempt this before we have obtained a far more com- 
plete and discriminating view of constituted substance — ■- 
of the nature of the alliance between primitive substance 
and coordinated rational principles, and of the character 



52 We perceive the Substance of Bodies. 

of these adapted principles, which as realized in sub- 
stance, are its existing rational constitution. 

If it should still be denied that we can really perceive 
substance itself, as now endowed with a rational coopera- 
tive constitution, in the nature of the case there can be 
no mode of proving the position except by direct appeal 
to facts, and to one's own personal experience. If each 
person does not directly perceive substance, manifesting its 
various modes of property in all the many things about 
him, no one else can do this for him. He must wait for 
a more enlightened vision ! 





WE PERCEIVE BODIES AT A DISTANCE. 

[IT is currently maintained by philosophers that the 
field for direct perception is limited to the hu- 
man organism. Nothing can be immediately 
perceived, they maintain, which is not literally within this 
organism, or in direct contact with it. Everything at a 
distance, it is held, is cognized mediately or representatively. 
Thus it is maintained that I do not, through the eye, 
immediately or directly perceive the paper and pen with 
which I am writing. I can perceive them directly only 
through the hand which is in contact with them. Look- 
ing out now upon the mountain and the wide plain, they 
insist that I do not directly perceive trees, houses, ships, 
water, land, or clouds ; but what I do really and presen- 
tatively perceive, is only the light reflected from these sev- 
eral bodies ; and that I infer from this the existence of the 
bodies thus represented. 

"An external existence and an organ of sense," says 
Sir William Hamilton, " as both material, can stand in re- 
lation only according to the laws of matter. According to 
these laws things related, connected, must act and be 
acted on ; but a thing can act only where it is. There- 
fore the thing perceived, and the percipient organ, must 
meet in place — must be contiguous." 

London and San Francisco had not chatted together 
across the Atlantic and one continent when Sir William 
wrote the above paragraph. Electricity can make the 
steel hammers of the antipodes beat in cadence like next 
door neighbors — is it not possible, then, to suppose that 
light may establish its telegraph between the mind and 



54 We perceive Bodies at a Distance. 

the distant object ? Since human constructive talent has 
practically discovered how to annihilate space in the ma- 
terial world, surely, if there is an Author of the creative 
scheme of the present cosmos, he may be credited as 
knowing how to do likewise ; especially if, as in this case, 
the fact is positively attested by consciousness. 

Certainly no laws of matter or mind need be violated. 
The mind and the distant body each acts and is acted 
upon by the other, and each in its own place, but through 
the aid of other cooperative forces. We know that a 
subtle material communication does really exist all the 
way between the organism and each distant object ; yet 
why should this fact affect either the immediacy, the 
accuracy, or the distinctness of the perception ? Neither 
the organism nor the undulations of light represent the 
object ; it presents itself; and not to the bodily organ, 
but to the coordinated mental eye. It is not here, press- 
ing its image upon the retina, but off there in the dis- 
tance, establishing its relations with the perceiving mind. 
The material media are coordinated with the organism, 
with the perceiving mind, and with the object perceived \ 
but as cooperative modes, not as a representative of either. 
Each organic sense has its especial extra-organic chain 
of communication with the objective world. Something 
material conveys the undulations of light from the illu- 
minated body to the eye, conveys sound from the sound- 
ing body to the ear, heat from the heated body to the 
nerves of sensation, and odor from the odoriferous body 
to the nostrils. Something material reaches the coordi- 
nated organism in every case of sensation, producing a 
responsive modification in its special sense ; but this or- 
ganic modification is as much extra-mental as is the dis- 
tant mountain or the far-off whizzing, rushing cannon-ball 
which produces it. The sensation is mental ; so is its ac- 
companying perception of the object which causes this 
sensation ; but neither of these are represented by material 



We perceive Bodies at a Distance. 55 

forces. If, then, the mind can perceive an object directly, 
when the intervening organism and the object are in con- 
tact, why should it not do this also though there be a 
more extended chain of communication between them ? 
The motion of heat, light, sound, or any other impulse 
from the object, enables that object to present itself to the 
living subject, who must then directly perceive through 
its own powers of insight or intuition. 

The organic modification may be itself perceived and 
apprehended by the mind ; but the perceptive act, even 
in this case, must be purely mental. Mental feeling — 
sensation proper — is produced in connection with the or- 
ganic modification ; but it is no more to be confounded 
with it than perception is. Consciousness includes both 
sensation proper and perception proper in the same act. 

The mind can perceive also the extra-organic causes 
of the organic modification ; it can distinguish and sep- 
arate these, can follow them all back to the distant object, 
as the mountain or cannon-ball ; which nevertheless, it 
immediately perceives and knows. Do you ask how the 
intellectual perception is conditioned upon the organic 
modification ? This connection we shall consider here- 
after. But whether or not we are able to perceive how or 
why the mind is incarnated and made dependent upon 
its body for its purely mental knowledge of material 
things, yet the fact that it is so is patent to us continu- 
ally. The reasons for constituting anything as it is and 
not otherwise, and for coordinating many several pro- 
cesses in the way that has been done, are not actualized 
in things, and of course we cannot perceive them. We 
can only infer and reason in regard to them \ but the how, 
the definite manner in which things are related is a 
legitimate fact, and can therefore be perceived, if we but 
possess adequate powers to that end. 

It is self-evident that the eye could not aid us to per- 
ceive bodies if the sun did not assist also with his light. 



56 We perceive Bodies at a Distance. 

He lends us his powerful telescope, with which we anni- 
hilate distance. The ship yonder is sailing rapidly on 
its way. I perceive it, and therefore know that it exists. 
There are miles intervening ; but the space, the atmos- 
phere, the sunshine, the glass in my closed window, the 
color rebounding from every point of mast and sail into 
my open eye, and the eye through which I look, are all so 
transparent or so adapted to assist my vision, that I per- 
ceive the real ship : nothing represents it to me ; it is 
there bodily, presenting itself. I might indeed be subject 
to an optical illusion, certain combinations of the forces of 
matter might produce an unusual mirage, or my eyes might 
be diseased and delude me ; but we can test the instru- 
ments we use, can more thoroughly investigate the mate- 
rial media which seems partially deceptive, and in and 
through all this, may at length perceive the object by a 
more full and just insight into all its relations, as well as 
by direct cognizance of its substantial and constituted 
existence. 

Can any one really doubt that vision may extend its 
perceptions beyond the calculable limits of space ? If we 
perceive that it does this, what more can be said ? Look 
at the Moon and you have specific evidence that you see 
the very planet herself, her broad changing face clearly 
showing you many of her quaint individualisms. A glass 
powerful enough would reveal as many characteristics of 
the dimmest fixed star, convincing us by personal experi- 
ence that the eye and the light alike are normal telescopes 
practically annihilating distance between bodies. 

Ancient philosophers, as we have seen, denied that we 
could perceive bodies at all ; they held that we could only 
perceive ideas and compelled us to infer or think the ex- 
istence of an actual world ; the later teachers admit that 
we may immediately perceive such bodies as are in con- 
tact with our organisms ; but they also compel us to infer 
or thirtk the existence of all distant bodies. How much, 



We perceive Bodies at a Distance. 5 7 

then, have we gained ? Very much, I admit. Under the 
former theory Hume could prove that there is no objective 
world ; or at least that we can never be assured of its ex- 
istence, since we can only perceive its effigies, which at 
best are only shadows, and may not represent anything 
substantial. By the later hypothesis we can know that 
there is an actual objective world, since the organism and 
everything with which it comes in contact is immediately 
perceived and distinguished from the me of consciousness ; 
yet what a limited domain in which to exercise our boasted 
perceptive force. Our right hands should " touch the 
East " and our " left hands the West," if we must handle 
tree, and rock, and cloud, and lay our palms on the brow 
of distant mountains, to assure ourselves that they are 
not phantasms. Who is willing to blot out the science 
of astronomy from immediate perception ? Sun, moon, 
and planets utterly without the pale of direct cognition ! 
Let our heads reach the heavens if we can poke knowl- 
edge into them only by laying our foreheads upon the 
stars ! 

The ship, which I saw but a moment since, has disap- 
peared behind the mountain. I can no longer affirm 
that it exists as a ship. I infer that it exists, for I 
saw it but a little while ago, and I perceive that per- 
cept by an act of memory; yet the ship is a perishable 
structure, and I can only suppose or believe that it still 
exists, though all probabilities are in favor of its con- 
tinuance. Who shall convince me that my knowledge 
of yonder mountain, the clouds hanging above it, the 
young moon scattering them with its flood of light, and 
holding back the coming twilight — that my present per- 
ception of all these beautiful things is no more imme- 
diate or certain than my second-hand belief as to the 
vanished ship ? Have I no present perception of the 
stars which steal out one by one into the field of my vis- 
ion ? I appeal from this decision to the common testi- 



58 We perceive Bodies at a Distance. 

mony of mankind, unprejudiced by a philosophic theory! 
I appeal to every unbiased personal consciousness, which 
must affirm the perceived present existence of distant 
bodies just as unqualifiedly as it affirms its own personal 
existence. Why may not the field of perception be as 
broad as the remotest material relations of the organism 
in which the Perceptive Power is incarnated ? Who shall 
limit the possibilities of human Perceptive Force ? 





MENTAL AND EXTRA-ORGANIC COORDI- 
NATIONS. 

I HO has ever held that heat and sound represent 
to us the heated and sounding bodies which pro- 
duce them ? Yet they do this in the same sense in 
which light does ! Light is known to imprint the image 
of the body from which it emanates upon the retina of the 
eye ; yet it is not this image which the mind perceives ! 
Even though its attention be especially directed to it, it 
cannot perceive this image ; it can only perceive the body 
represented by the image upon the retina. It perceives 
this body not in the eye, but off in the distance ; in its real 
position, and with all its proper dimensions. The image 
itself is inverted and exceedingly minute ; and there is a 
separate likeness printed in each eye. 

An optician who would study this organic picture, who 
would investigate the science of vision in any of its mate- 
rial phases, must do this precisely as the physicist does in 
any other department of material science ; he must study, 
not his own eyes from within, but other eyes from without. 
He must become the anatomist, penetrating to the facts 
of structure, studying them where they are to be found in 
their places, and investigating the nature of nerves and 
brain from the very organs themselves ; and he must study 
the laws of light in their cooperation with these organic 
functions. When he can fathom all the joint mysteries of 
their action and interaction, he has then unraveled the 
secrets of vision in its material aspects. Next he must 
penetrate into the nature and processes arising from the 
connection between the mind and its organism, question 



60 Mental and Extra-Organic Coordinations. 

the mode by which material affections can influence 
mental perceptions, the character of mental vision, and 
the nature of the real observer. All this is within the 
legitimate domain of Perceptive Force ; but there are two 
distinct departments of that domain. The one is wholly 
mental, the other wholly material ; yet the modes of inter- 
action between the two are all important to be determined. 

The mind is competent to testify directly as to the nature 
of its perceptions, obtained through its organism in a nor- 
mal state ; but it is no more cognizant of the nature of 
that organism and of its cooperations with itself, than it is 
of extra-mental facts and processes. All its proper expe- 
riences are purely mental ; and yet they are related to, 
and dependent upon coordinated activities, organic and 
extra-organic. These are adjusted to its needs in a system 
of pre-arrangements wholly independent of its knowledge 
or control. No one can discover the nature of his own 
organic growth, maintenance, or decay ; can discover the 
processes of his digestion, circulation, or any other organic 
fact whatsoever, through the simple study of his purely 
mental experiences ; yet he can just as well fathom all the 
cooperative processes which result in the digestion of food 
or the circulation of the blood, by merely attending to his 
own feelings as affected by these processes, as he can 
fathom the processes of vision by simply attending to his 
subjective perceptions. His sensations and perceptions 
are conditioned upon his organic modifications ; but these 
modifications are as foreign to himself and as unknown to 
him except in the sense in which they affect his own per- 
sonal modes, as are any other material changes. Vision 
enables him to apprehend distant bodies ; but in that 
apprehension he wholly disregards the material media, 
and looks beyond into the nature of the things which they 
have brought him into the right relations for immediately 
perceiving. 

A leaf, absorbing the red light and throwing off the yel- 



Mental and Extra- Organic Coordinations. 6 1 

low and blue, appears to us green ; the flowers by similar 
processes dress themselves to our vision in as many hues 
as there are colored rays in possible combinations ; and 
analogy must teach us that it is quite in keeping for the 
eye to gather up enough rays, thrown off from every point 
of an object, to give it the miniature fac-simile of the orig- 
inal. The beautiful experiments by which various sub- 
stances are shown to arrest one or more colored rays of 
the beam of light and to be transparent to all the rest ; 
and the still more striking processes by which Professor 
Tyndal proves that certain substances, opaque to all light, 
are yet transparent to heat, give us such enlarged ideas of 
the various adaptations of things, that we are better pre- 
pared to comprehend the elective processes of the organic 
eye in vision, or the ear in hearing. 

Light and heat are modes of motion • and each little 
wavelet must literally deal its own little blow against what- 
ever it touches. As rays of light emanate from every 
point of the object, each leaving its mark, the whole 
together must print an impression like in form to the 
source from whence it comes, and thus, doubtless, impres- 
sions, reflections, or pictures of things are printed all over 
us — as we should perceive, if we had delicacy of vision 
sufficient to detect them. Such impressions are mirrored 
in every polished surface, and light must daguerreotype 
them upon every object on which it falls. They must be 
on our faces as really as in our eyes, although they do not 
here so modify the organism as to enable us to look 
through it at their originals. The impressions themselves 
must also be diffused, and doubtless also confused with 
other similar reflections ; while in the eye they are col- 
lected and concentrated. 

But the millions of waves of light and heat which fall 
over us continually, dashing against us as literally as the 
sea-tides beat against the shore, must produce a visible 
impress upon the general organism, — visible, I mean, to 



62 Mental and Extra-Organic Coordinations. 

eyes gifted with powers which are able constantly to per- 
ceive it, as ours are not, except as to some of its coarser 
and more abiding effects. We may sit all day under the 
reflected light and warmth of the most beautiful objects, 
and yet we should know nothing whatever of their effects 
upon us if we were to remain with blinded eyes. When 
the sun or some intensely heated body pours his fiery flood 
over us, we can perceive that without eyesight. Each 
nerve of sensation, which is in the right angle to catch the 
beams, is like a separate sense in itself, advertising us of 
the storm of heat in which we are submerged. We can 
see the skin visibly redden under such an ordeal, we recog- 
nize the brown hue and the thickened texture which are 
the subsequent results ; and we have only to remember 
that the mildest light and heat radiated from every object 
about us, though less marked, is similar in its mode of 
action. 

Sound, also, which is transmitted by motion of the 
atmosphere, must batter its impress of the sounding body 
everywhere ; and particularly within the ear, where the 
organism is especially adapted to concentrate the impor- 
tunate little sound hammers. The ear can take no note 
of figure, yet since we know that these sound wavelets 
must smite us on hands and face, though we are not adver- 
tised of the fact by any coordinated organ, and since, aside 
from the ear, the whole dull mass of organism can help us 
to no cognizance whatever of sound, we may well believe 
that never so distinct an image of the sounding body 
might be battered upon our ears or our faces, and we be 
none the wiser therefor ! We must question general 
science • which alone can determine whether every force 
whatever, when radiated from matter, does or does not, 
under the right conditions, produce on the human organ- 
ism, and indeed on every object whatever, a literal imprint 
of the form whence it emanated. 

Every mode of force is motion-producing, and everything 



Mental and Extra-Organic Coordinations. 63 

which moves, whether atom or mass, must leave some 
impress upon everything else with which it comes in con- 
tact. We know that there is a perpetual action and coun- 
teraction between the organism and its environment. Not 
only does every object perpetually radiate light and heat ; 
but it is interchanging electricity, magnetism, chemical 
influences, and all the other modes of force which are 
normal to it, so that the sum-total of change and general 
modification which it perpetually undergoes must be some- 
thing incalculable. A few special organs aid us in taking 
note of a few special influences and effects ; but these no 
more represent the objects producing those effects, nor do 
the resulting organic modifications, than the white drawing- 
paper, and the black lead-pencil together represent the 
artist. The whole system of natural coordinations must 
be studied, not through subjective experience, but by ob- 
jective perception. We must immediately perceive these 
coordinations and their resulting processes ; cognizing 
them as far as may be through their actual operations. 
That all things are endlessly cooperative is perfectly evi- 
dent; yet the amount of molecular modification which 
everything constantly undergoes, seems yet to be very 
generally overlooked. 

Physicians prescribe air, sunshine, and change of scene 
to invalids ; but there is a curious field for speculation 
(possibly even for mathematical science to determine 
quantitatively), as to the various proportions of the differ- 
ent influences producing the beneficial results. How 
much may be attributed to the direct mental stimulus 
thus communicated ? how much to change of air with its 
modified states and new ingredients, whether absorbed 
through the lungs or through the skin ? how much to in- 
creased exercise, quickening the general activity ? and how 
much is conveyed from the surface of the body to the 
whole system through the medium of the complete list of 
chemical, vital, and molecular forces generally, beating 



64 Mental and Extra-Organic Coordinations. 

upon the organism like a perpetual hail-storm — the organ- 
ism in turn hurling back its overcharge of any mode of 
force modified and transmuted within itself ? A bedridden 
invalid, stifled in his sheets and blankets, strengthened 
only by his unrelished food and by the changes of the 
pitying atmosphere, which will establish its currents of life 
everywhere more or less energetically, cannot at all per- 
ceive the prostrating influences which are at work within 
and about him. The room-bound sick man, whose vital 
forces have acted and reacted upon all his surroundings, 
till they have long since averaged a common level, is con- 
demned a prisoner to inanity and lassitude \ pitiless jailers, 
placed over him by the irrevocable laws of cause and effect. 
Even a poor fine lady, living in her shaded parlors, can be 
scarcely more alive to the keenest enjoyments of physical 
and reacting mental life ; yet neither is advised of this, 
since no process of introspection will include organic co- 
operations. 

All physical science, however, assures us that a sun- 
browned skin is wholesome, and that every walk and drive 
has infinitely more in it than air, exercise, or aesthetic enjoy- 
ment. The half-naked children of poverty, when they do 
not perish of cold and too rude exposure, are hardened 
and invigorated by the vitality which pours in upon the 
naked limbs, in free and easy association with the sur- 
rounding elements. The weight and volume of atmosphere 
respired by a healthy pair of lungs has been estimated, 
and also the enormous amount of insensible perspiration 
thrown off by a single human body in a day ; the results 
are so statistically and unanswerably given that they startle 
us into the imperative need of pure air and wholesome 
clothing, as accessaries to health. But no one has yet 
presumed to estimate quantitatively the influence of any 
natural force, as light, heat, magnetism, electricity, etc., in 
its interaction between the human body and its surround- 
ings ; yet enough is known even as to the quantitative rela- 



Mental and Extra-Organic Coordinations. 65 

tions of these forces to affirm that the action of any one 
of them upon the organism, and through that upon the 
mind itself, especially in change of scene and conditions, 
is so great as to be almost incredible. In the aggregate, 
they can build up, and they can destroy ! 

Going to sea, means more even than breathing fresh sea 
air ! A year or two in Europe, South America, or any 
other remote locality, should have more and immeasurably 
better life in it than can be crowded into that interval of 
time at home. Other things being equal, a man who 
would have lived feebly in one place to the age of seventy, 
should live vigorously to seventy-five, if the added years 
could be judiciously spent, at intervals, among a wide 
variety of scenes. A Hollander, living to middle life in 
his quaint low-lands, would find the sharp arrows of light 
from the beautiful Swiss mountains, competent to shoot 
enthusiasm and strength into him through every pore. It 
is worth while to be saturated with the many beautiful 
forms and colors of nature, in various of her most diverse 
moods ; getting inspiration from them, not through the eye 
alone, but by becoming a recipient of their ever-varying 
phases, hues, temperatures, and outlines ; and literally 
exchanging influences with them. Equal action and reac- 
tion is nature's law everywhere ; and though a child jump- 
ing from his hobby-horse may hardly expect to move the 
world perceptibly, yet he must produce some infinitesimal 
change in its center of gravity through his own change of 
position. The ocean and the mountain, in their greatness, 
may be but little modified by our interchange with them of 
coordinated forces ; while we in our weakness may yet be 
immensely strengthened and renovated thereby. We do 
well to remember that we are really quantitatively allied 
to every object about us \ so that we are perpetually 
being acted upon and are unconsciously reacting again 
as unceasingly to our own good or hurt. The evils of 
poorly ventilated houses, school-rooms, lecture-rooms, and 
5 



66 Mental and Extra-Organic Coordinations. 

churches, have never yet been fully and emphatically 
enough stated ; while the benefits resulting from frequent 
variety and change in all our conditions of life have never 
been sufficiently enforced. The destruction of the poor 
even in this also is their poverty ; while the possessors of 
riches, with their frequent drawbacks of dissipation, are 
yet better practical learners of hygiene than their ever- 
toiling kinsmen. They who have neither poverty nor 
riches should be best able to study and practice the laws, 
not of disease, but of health ; to seek not the cure of 
already acquired evils, but the positive attainment of wait- 
ing good. The time has come for a more earnest and 
careful attention to the conditions which are best suited to 
the health and vigor of the human body, and through 
this of the indwelling mind. These are to be found not 
in the organism alone, but in all its coordinations. 




WE MAY PERCEIVE THE RATIONAL PROP- 
ERTIES OF THINGS. 

E may merely perceive the fact that matter exists 
in certain obvious modes, or, we may still farther 
perceive the rational nature of these modes ! 
A ploughman and his ox are in the field together ; they 
see an apple fall from the tree, a stone removed from its 
place, and carried to a neighboring wall, and a child run- 
ning to and fro in its play. The ox at his master's side 
perceives all these things in common with the man, as he 
gives evidence of doing in various ways. He has real 
intelligence enough to enable him to discriminate between 
the apple, the stone, and the child. He would step aside 
to avoid a blow from a moving body, or to reach the 
apple ; but it would seem that he sees, hears, smells, 
tastes nothing but positive extended substance. All the 
qualities which he perceives are quantitative properties — 
are literally material parts of the one whole ; but the man, 
unlearned and a plodder though he be, at once perceives, 
also, something of the abstract principle of motion \ re- 
vealed to him through the moving bodies. Gifted with an 
insight into the rational nature of things, he need see but 
one body moving ; when he immediately sees that not this 
body alone, but all other bodies must be capable of a 
change of locality, that the possibility of moving or of 
being moved must be an affection, not of the apple, the 
stone, and the child merely, but of all bodies generally. 
Without reasoning about it, without being able, perhaps, 
to state it clearly in words, the very weakest man not 
altogether an idiot, abundantly proves, by his practical 



68 We may perceive the Rational 

conduct in life, that he fully recognizes the beautiful 
abstract principle of motion, as an unchanging feature 
actualized in the nature of things. It is a feature, too, 
which he has not himself conceived, but which he has 
directly perceived. 

This actualized principle of motion is a rational prin- 
ciple, — that is, it is a principle of intelligence or thought, 
a principle which, from the nature of it, could not have 
been actualized with its many related modes as an orderly 
consistent property of things, without the intervention of a 
rational mind. Regarding substance as self-existent or 
necessarily existent, we may also suppose that there neces- 
sarily existed in it the possibility of motion or change of 
locality ; and also a possible motion-producing force. 
Property, whether capacity or force, if necessarily existent, 
must involve the possibility of change, and force adequate 
to produce change. Unsentient, self-existent force, could 
produce aimless, chaotic changes — motions requiring no 
foresight and produced to no definite end. But it is im- 
possible to conceive that an unsentient or irrational force 
could originate a very complicated and perfect system 
of beautifully coordinated changes, — of motions always 
mathematically determined and most nicely adjusted each 
to all the others, and obeying always the most rigid quan- 
titative laws, — processes all depending one on another, 
and all mutually adapted to secure the most desirable 
fixed results. All this at once elevates motion from the 
rank of a self-existing, unsentient, unwitting, absolute 
property, to that of a pure principle, abstracted from 
things by rational thought, coordinated in a system of 
relative, preadjusted, possible changes ; and thus definitely 
conceived, reapplied to things as a scheme of actualized 
rational modes, which is henceforth to regulate all actual 
processes. 

Rational properties are those properties which have 
been, in thought, abstracted from things, as self-existent 



Properties of Things. 69 

chaotic possibilities, and coordinated to henceforth exist 
and act in a perfectly determinate, rational manner. Thus 
the laws of motion are not self-existent but created • and 
they are all definite and unchanging. They are the fixed 
immutable elements of things, and have been made such, 
as I maintain, through a scheme of rational or intelligent 
thought, applied to self-existent substance and property. 

Again, self-existent substance must have possessed orig- 
inally a latent possibility of becoming beautiful, of develop- 
ing those fitting, adjusted combinations of things which are 
so eminently pleasing to every beholder ; and yet, unintel- 
ligent forces could never have realized those principles of 
beauty, which we find everywhere operative ! A rational 
mind, endowed with a sense of the beautiful, could alone 
have developed these elements of beauty everywhere ; 
could have devised and established immutable laws of the 
beautiful in every department of being, coordinating all 
things in one aesthetic whole. 

Substance must also have possessed the possibility of 
being everywhere mathematically related, of assuming 
specific forms, colors, texture, and of manifesting its vari- 
ous present phenomena; but as all these manifestations 
are definitely coordinated, as every change takes place 
according to specific fixed rules, all these results are of 
such a character as to furnish positive evidence that they 
must have been predetermined in thought. A power 
adequate to produce a scheme so eminently rational as 
this, must have been itself a Rational Power. 

Rational properties are all those elements of things, 
which, having been obviously coadapted in thought, now 
comprise the whole existing rational or thought-constitu- 
tion of substance, a constitution operating always accord- 
ing to established specific processes. This rational con- 
stitution is something which may be perceived and cognized 
by every mind whose powers are of a rational order, and 
have therefore been coordinated with its rational character. 



jo We may perceive the Rational 

Every item and detail of this rational constitution may be 
intuitively apprehended by related mental powers. There 
it is, a real fact, operative in things, and manifesting or 
presenting to us its true character perpetually. Thus, 
when one sees an apple divided in halves, a stone broken 
asunder, or a leaf separated from a tree, if he is a rational 
being, he cannot but perceive in the process the under- 
lying general principle of divisibility. If he looks at an 
object which has a circular form, he cannot help perceiv- 
ing that there is a principle of figure actualized in this 
object; or if he tastes a sweet flavor or a bitter one, he 
begins at once to have some idea of sweetness and of bit- 
terness, as concepts which have been thus realized in con- 
crete substances. No thoroughly rational being can help 
perceiving more or less of the nature of these thought- 
ideals which he sees actualized before him. One who has 
power enough to originate similar schemes of coordinated 
thought, and to apply them to tangible things, as the com- 
monest man does perpetually in his handicraft and the 
most gifted in his higher art or invention, can also per- 
ceive the thoughts everywhere realized and conserved in 
the objective world. His own intellectual power is suffi- 
ciently akin to that higher power which is manifested in 
creation, to enable him to cognize something of the nature 
of the creative act. A wider vision may also apprehend 
the less obvious principles and their more complicated 
coordinations. They all exist, practically exemplified and 
operative in the existing cosmos. 

To have an adequate perception of the rational proper- 
ties of substance, is merely to have a sufficiently clear and 
comprehensive perception of the persisting rational consti- 
tution of things. Such a cognition would not at all differ 
in kind, but only in degree, from the simplest perceptive 
act. The magnitude of the creative scheme is indeed so 
far beyond our highest conception or perception as to bt* 
to us practically infinite \ yet our powers, so far as they do 
extend, may give real and true percepts. 



Properties of Things. 71 

Obviously if there is a coordinated rational scheme 
actualized in the existing universe, some Rational Power 
must have originated that scheme, and established it as 
the persisting rational constitution of this universe. While 
we credit the present nature of things, it must be held 
that even Deity could no more have created something 
from nothing than man can. Self-existent himself, he 
must have realized or incarnated his scheme of thought in 
other self-existent substance and property. In proof of 
this position, we can only appeal to the universe itself; 
believing that it will be possible to indicate the preemi- 
nently rational character of all its constitutional laws, pro- 
cesses, and modes, as illustrated in the natures both of 
matter and mind. This universe is the only text-book 
from which we can study the science of the Rational Con- 
stitution of things. 

Metaphysicians and philosophers generally have ex- 
pended much time in determining the origin and nature 
of the ideas which are found in the human mind. They 
have talked of ideas, relative, contingent, and finite ; and 
ideas, absolute, necessary, and infinite. They have derived 
these ideas from sensation, or from reason, or from both in 
turn, arguing endlessly about the real origin and character 
of their various concepts, and differing in their notions 
from the slightest point of divergence to even an infinite 
degree ; but any philosophy which concerns itself chiefly 
with subjective concepts is certain of going widely astray. 
Thus we find one thinker maintaining with Locke, that the 
idea of space is finite, another with Cousin, that the idea 
of space is infinite, and still another with Hamilton, assert- 
ing that the idea of space is only an infinite negation. We 
can only cry out in self-defense, " Pray speak for your- 
selves, gentlemen ! You may be quite competent to ex- 
pound your own ideas, but it is certain that you are not all 
in possession of the true idea. If you will help us to 
that, then help us to comprehend space itself. Our ideas 



72 We may perceive the Rational 

of space and of many other things are subject to revision, 
but every idea which the Creator has actualized in his 
creation is as permanent as is the substance which em- 
bodies it ! " If one will look back into his own childish 
experience, memory may perhaps convince him that his 
idea of space was then most vague and indefinite. If he 
can recall the first philosopher whose works he studied on 
that point, he may remember the thrill of astonishment 
and delight with which he comprehended and adopted the 
ideas of his author ; but if he has since read or thought 
still farther, he has possibly made three or four somer- 
saults of opinion subsequently. The only remedy is the 
study of space itself. Space certainly exists in rational 
coordinations with things, and we must study it in both its 
persisting nature and relations ; all of which must be im- 
mediately perceived. So of everything else. Children 
may go on learning by rote, but one must use his own 
vision if he would really perceive the existing principles 
of things. We should wonder at a group of naturalists, 
if, finding them engrossed in studying the daguerreotype of 
a rose, and explaining by what nice processes of light and 
various chemical agencies they had been able to make 
so perfect and beautiful a representation, we learned, 
also, that they were dogmatizing and contending, on the 
evidence of this picture, about the nature of a living 
rose ! 

All the rational properties of things must be studied at 
first hand, for they admit of no representation by another. 
They must present themselves ! This is even more impera- 
tive than with the outward forms of things, for while one 
can gain some knowledge of tangible properties by de- 
scription or representation of them, there can be no de- 
scription or representation of a rational property. It can 
only be expressed. As the specific gravity of a fluid is 
present in every drop ; or as the normal temperature of a 



Properties of Things. 



73 



body is all through and through it, so the principles of 
things permeate their substances, constituting their very 
and essential nature. There they may be found and ap- 
prehended, by whoever has powers ample enough and well 
enough disciplined. 





THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER. 

pT has been already stated that Substance and 
Property are both assumed to be absolute, self- 
existent, or uncreated. Absolute property \ for the 
sake of distinctness in ideas, is regarded as both active 
and passive, that is, as at once force and capacity. Abso- 
lute force, then, would be the innate, uncreated energy per- 
taining to self-existent Being, and absolute capacity the 
innate possibility of change in self-existent Being. I, for 
one, cannot conceive of even self-existent being except as 
possessing force or energy inseparable from itself, and 
equally self-existent ; nor can I conceive that being could 
exist with absolutely no capacity for change : therefore I 
must regard Substance and Property as equally self-existent 
and forever inseparable. 

In these Studies, property means a definite, persistent 
something, inseparable from its own proper substance ; 
and as it is maintained that, in reality, each atom or 
molecule of substance and its property, are one and in- 
separable, and together constitute the self-existent unit, so 
also the property itself is one and inseparable, and the 
terms force and capacity indicate only the two ways of look- 
ing at the same thing. 

In treating of the relative or present constitution of 
things, to avoid circumlocution, I shall sometimes speak 
of forces and capacities in the plural, though meaning by 
this only the various modes of the one indivisible property 
of each self-existent molecule. As language is already 
constructed this is almost unavoidable, and is sanctioned 
by usage. Relative modes of property may be classified as 



The Constitution of Matter. 75 

innate or inherent modes, or properties proper ; and resultant 
properties, or relations proper. 

The innate properties are the aggregate correlated modes 
of the one absolute property, and are all mutually con- 
vertible among themselves. 

Resultant properties are facts arising from coordinated 
modes and processes, and are transient, pertaining to the 
changeable phases of things ; or persistent relations, per- 
taining to the persisting constitution of things. 

I use the term characteristics as covering all distinguish- 
ing modes of being, general or particular, by virtue of 
which any substance may be characterized ; and through 
which it may be discriminated from all other substances. 
Thus each substance in its ordinary condition, has a group 
of characteristics which comprehend alike all its modes of 
property and process. 

Process, in the present volume, means always a definite 
coordinated mode of action. It is maintained that every 
process of nature, sentient as well as unsentient, has been 
prevized in the Creative Thought ; that all unsentient or 
purely quantitative processes are so coordinated in things 
that they go forward always with rigid mathematical pre- 
cision, and are always, taken in the largest sense, changes 
producing a real advance or progress towards a higher 
condition of things. Thus all unsentient processes are 
regarded as fixed modes of evolution, through which, from 
simple substance and property, by new combinations, the 
homogeneous is ever becoming more and more heteroge- 
neous ; thus originating new compounds, new forms, modes, 
and conditions, with ever-increasing beauty and utility. 
Sentient processes, including both quantitative and quali- 
tative coordinations, have their own special modes of pro- 
cess, which will be treated of at length hereafter. Their 
coordinations are also self-evidently fore-ordained, and 
are maintained inviolable in their actual operations. Sen- 
tient processes, also, taken in the largest related sense, are 



76 The Constitution of Matter. 

established modes of sentient development, through which 
higher and better living experiences are forever eventua- 
ting. 

The term Attribute is a synonym for property. It has 
very generally been made to designate a dignified mode of 
property, as an intellectual or moral power — if I were to 
give it a special signification at all, it would be that of a 
hypothetic property, a concept not yet decided to be an 
actual mode of things. 

Matter, it is believed, is constituted by the one primary 
abstract thought or principle of extension, as variously 
coordinated in things. All matter is coordinated through 
related capacities for being extended by various modes, 
and to various degrees ; effected through its own innate 
force, also coordinated to act through preadjusted modes 
and processes. How this was all effected we do not ask ; 
we turn simply to the fact as we find it exemplified. It is 
found by experience that each particular kind of matter 
has a specific nature of its own, which is definitely estab- 
lished ; and which is always absolutely the same under like 
conditions. Gold is always gold, and all the characteris- 
tics of one ounce of pure gold are exactly equal to those 
of every other ounce of pure gold. The same is true of 
every specific substance, simple or compound. Of the 
forty-two or three supposed elementary substances, each 
possesses groups of characteristics very unlike those of all 
the others ; yet a given weight or volume of any one ele- 
ment, possesses all characteristics exactly equal to those 
of every other equal weight or volume of the same kind ; 
and double or treble the weight or volume of substance 
has double or treble the amount of all characteristics. 
This rule has never been found to fail in any instance, 
so that a knowledge of the nature of one piece of gold 
or one ounce of oxygen, is, in effect, a cognizance of 
the nature of all the gold and all the oxygen in the uni- 
verse. 



The Constitution of Matter. 77 

The element enters into compounds, undergoes changes, 
and exhibits new phases continually; but its original 
nature is intact, indestructible, and always, under like 
conditions, exhibits like characteristics. Thus each parti- 
cle of matter, apparently, has its own fixed special consti- 
tution, and is a definite centre of untransferable character- 
istics. All its properties follow the fortunes of their sub- 
stance under all known circumstances, entering with it 
into compounds, changing with it and selecting new com- 
pounds, or dissolving all connections and standing again 
in isolation. Under all these differing conditions, each 
grain of any given substance exhibits exactly the same 
kind and amount of phenomena that every other grain of 
like substance does under like conditions ; and if it is hid- 
den away for years or for ages in any compound, with all 
its modes of property as a simple, wholly or partially in- 
operative, yet when it is again brought to light in its ele- 
mentary character, it is as fresh and vigorous in all its 
characteristics as though it were created only yesterday. 
This is the more remarkable because the modes of prop- 
erty peculiar to it as an element are often more or less 
inactive or at least unrecognizable in the compound ; and 
because each distinctive phase of the compound is endowed 
with a coordinated group of modes peculiar to itself, which 
are as well defined and intact, and as perfectly adjusted to 
that special phase of matter as the elementary modes are 
to the elementary type. Thus, water is altogether unlike 
its elements ; while they are gases, it is liquid or even 
solid. The dominant properties of a compound often 
baffle all a priori calculations based upon a previous 
knowledge of its factors. Sulphur is yellow, and copper 
red, yet their compound sulphuret of copper is black; 
the sulphate of potash lays aside all the acrid characteris- 
tics of both sulphuric acid and potash ; and there are cases 
in which the compound bears almost no resemblance to its 
constituents either in density, in form, color, smell, taste, 



78 The Constitution of Matter. 

fusibility, volatility, or chemical affinities. But while there 
are examples of an almost total reversal of the character- 
istics of the simples, yet this is by no means a rule, for a 
large proportion of compounds bear a strong resemblance 
to their elements, exhibiting many of their characteristics 
in a marked degree. It is to be distinctly noted that when 
an element enters into widely dissimilar compounds, often 
combining in several different proportions with the same 
base, yet all these various compounds have each a per- 
fectly coordinated constitution, differing from all the others, 
but never varying in itself. The properties of any one 
grain of a given compound are exactly equal and identical 
in every particular with the properties of every other grain 
of the same compound ; these specific characteristics, then, 
evince the specific, unvarying, predetermined constitution 
of that mode of matter. 

This is not an hypothesis to be proved by argument ; 
but it is a question to be settled practically by physical 
science. They have invented instruments so delicate that 
we are able to weigh the thousandth part of a grain of 
matter, to measure distances by the thousandth part of a 
barleycorn, to measure heat by the thousandth part of a 
degree of Fahrenheit ; and to estimate properties and pro- 
cesses in general by various tests and experiments, almost 
incredible for the degree of nicest accuracy attained, and 
the above position is experimentally settled \ it has been 
quantitatively proved again and again, to all intents and 
purposes. Of course it cannot be asserted that every 
mode and process of matter has been actually weighed or 
measured ; but it is asserted that enough have been 
weighed, measured, or otherwise estimated, to make the 
induction as positive as in the nature of things it ever can 
be made by quantitative science. We will regard it, then, 
as settled by experience that each particular mode of mat- 
ter is endowed with established, coordinated modes of 
property ; and that a given amount of matter possesses an 



The Cofistitution of Matter. 79 

unvarying amount of property. We may intuitively per- 
ceive these related facts, as we see them illustrated in 
things. 

It is not intended to ignore the facts of allotropy \ show- 
ing that various elementary substances undergo remark- 
able changes while they are yet simple elements. These 
facts, on the contrary, are regarded as illustrations of 
various related modes pertaining even to the same ele- 
ment, but operative under differently coordinated condi- 
tions. Allotropic oxygen, phosphorus, and sulphur, are 
quite transformed in appearance, and changed in their 
manifestations of all physical and chemical properties. 
Similar transformations are equally exemplified in com- 
pounds. Water is either vapor, liquid, or solid ; and in the 
phenomena of crystallization the same substances assume 
a variety of crystalline forms, to be accounted for by a dif- 
ferent grouping of conditions. On a similar principle can 
we comprehend something of the three several definite 
modes under which simple carbon is known to us ; namely, 
charcoal, diamond, and graphite, — all differing in specific 
gravity, specific heat, conducting power for heat and elec- 
tricity, and in chemical relations. The brilliant hard dia- 
mond is visibly very unlike the black brittle charcoal, and 
the highly combustible coal is equally unlike graphite, 
which is so incombustible that it is specially used for 
furnaces and crucibles ; yet all three when pure, are simple 
carbon, and the three modes are as definite and invariable 
as any other established modes of matter. The whole 
subject is necessarily more or less to be settled by hypoth- 
esis ; but it is usually supposed by physicists that these 
elementary modifications are due to a difference in the 
grouping of the ultimate molecules. 

In this connection I may refer to the phenomena of 
catalysis, in which two or more substances are made to 
unite, or to be decomposed by the influence arising from 
the mere presence of another substance, which is not 



8o The Co7istitution of Matter. 

itself, apparently, at all affected by the process. Certain 
metallic oxides, as those of iron, copper, and manganese, 
so greatly facilitate the decomposition of the chlorate of 
potash, that if a small quantity of one of these be mixed 
with the salt, it will be decomposed at a comparatively low 
temperature, though the oxide itself undergoes no percep- 
tible change. Platinum possesses a remarkable influence 
in inducing the combination of bodies. If a little spongy 
platinum be thrown into a mixture of oxygen and hydro- 
gen, it becomes incandescent, and the gases combine with 
a loud explosion. A special mode of force, called catalytic 
force, has been assumed to explain these and many similar 
phenomena; but explanations on better understood hy- 
potheses are also given, and it may be presumed that with 
the advancement of science, all catalytic phenomena may 
be disposed of without the need of a special catalytic force. 
The only point which I wish to make in this connection is, 
that all similar inorganic substances, under similar condi- 
tions, are similarly modified. Every piece of platinum 
produces effects exactly like those produced by every other 
piece of platinum, under like conditions, and all ordinary 
sulphur can be converted into allotropic sulphur or allo- 
tropic sulphur into common sulphur, by definitely estab- 
lished processes. Thus each mode of matter, as well as 
each mode of force, is seen to be clearly defined and 
accurately realized. 

The principle of extension has been universally realized 
as a capacity of matter ; and all bodies have been vari- 
ously extended according to a definitely arranged and 
rigidly executed plan. Solids, liquids, and gases are the 
general modes in which ordinary matter is extended ; but 
everything has its own specific form and process of being 
extended. Thus, platinum, which is twenty times heavier 
than water, and hydrogen, the lightest ponderable sub- 
stance, differ widely as to relative weight and volume. A 
rock and a tree, both solid bodies, have their specific 



The Constitution of Matter. 81 

modes of formation and growth ; and these, again, are 
divided into persisting subtypes ; as granite, slate, mar- 
ble ; oak, willow, elm, pine. The prearranged plan of 
extension is persistently realized in the constant succes- 
sion of new forms, which follow each other in an endless 
progression. The modes and processes of organic growth 
will be treated of hereafter. 

Let us look now at crystallization or structure forma- 
tion in inorganic matter. Definite crystallogenic princi- 
ples are known to govern all inorganic matter, whether 
brought together by nature or art. All inorganic com- 
pounds assume a crystalline structure, each according to 
its innate nature and to the influencing relations under 
which the crystallization occurs. The most shapeless 
masses of rock are found to have, even to their minutest 
grains, a regular internal structure, which is identical in 
character with the most regular crystals of like composi- 
tion and conditions. In a single mineral, although the 
varieties of form are often very great, yet they are 
found to be referable to a single one out of several per- 
manent crystalline types ; so that from the first apparent 
complexness of like forms, one can trace, not only the 
most extreme simplicity in the fundamental form, but also 
a very regular, simple, and exact system of standard va- 
riations. Special variations arise as much or more from 
change in the coordinated modes of force as from chemi- 
cal composition, so that whether there shall be a mass of 
crowded, imperfect, small crystals, or a few perfect large 
ones, and what special type of variation the whole mass 
shall assume, is a question of variously coordinated con- 
ditions. Thus all crystallizations belonging to the same 
locality, sometimes embracing even large districts of 
country, have usually the same forms ; while in some re- 
mote region, the forms, though of the same common type, 
will be quite dissimilar. Artificial crystallization presents 



82 The Constitution of Matter. 

similar results. " Common salt crystallizing from pure 
water presents, almost invariably, a cubic form. But in 
a solution of boracic acid, it always occurs with truncated 
angles." * Rev. E. Craig, treating of microscopic chemis- 
try, says : " If sulphuric acid be added to carbonate of 
copper, crystals speedily appear, presenting the form of 
six-sided tabular prisms. Add a little ammonia, the form 
is changed entirely to a long rectangular prism, with the 
angles replaced. Add a little more ammonia, and the 
form changes to several varieties of the rhombic octa- 
hedron ; a little nitric acid restores again the form of the 
rectangular prism. In all these successive changes, it is not 
that a few crystals of another form have been superadded, 
but each time the metamorphosis is seen to take place in 
the whole mass." Something of crystalline structure is 
found even in glass, and it is believed that all inorganic 
substances assume definite crystalline forms in solidify- 
ing. Professor Dana defines crystals to be " inorganic 
solids bounded by plane surfaces symmetrically arranged, 
and resulting from the forces of the constituent mole- 
cules." Each mineral has its own mode of crystallization 
by which to distinguish it as we distinguish plants. It 
is known by the constancy of its angles and by inter- 
nal structure. Here, then, is evidence of a coordinated 
scheme of thought, embracing, according to the highest 
authority, six distinct systems of crystallization, each with 
its unlimited variety of forms and dimensions; but all of 
them definitely symmetrical and illustrating the highest 
mathematical order in the whole of their internal structure. 
It is assumed, also, by mineralogists, 2 that the crystal is 
really already formed in the fluid state, and that fluids, 
as well as solids, have definite orderly arrangements of 
molecules. All molecular forces have well-established, 
orderly >modes of process ; each acting always invariably 

1 Da*na's System of Mineralogy. 

2 Griffin's System of Crystallography. 



The Constitution of Matter. 83 

alike under like conditions. We must, therefore, infer 
that the principle of extension is actualized in everything 
through distinctly prevised and predetermined modes. 

Extension necessitates figure and size ; for if a body is 
extended it must be extended in some form and to some 
dimensions. It must also have place to be extended in ; 
and there will grow up with it all the multiform relations 
of position and space in general. Degrees of density, 
solidity, gravity, and many other coordinated principles 
will arise from a logical or rational necessity ; and we find 
all these multiplied combinations realized in matter. 

If matter can be extended, this extension can also be 
withdrawn, and the body be compacted or compressed 
again into smaller compass ; but the fact that there is ex- 
tension at all necessitates a limit to the possibility of com- 
pression ; necessitates a property of matter which may be 
termed incompressibility absolute; which is, in fact, only 
the obverse phase of extension. Between incompressi- 
bility absolute, and the largest possible extension there is 
room for any amount of practical extension and contrac- 
tion; and all bodies have capacities, not only for being 
variously extended, but capacities also for being again 
contracted. 

These various capacities are furthermore all coordi- 
nated with motion. Every material process is a process 
of change in locality. The distinct modes of motion, rec- 
ognized and described by leading physicists, are exceed- 
ingly diverse ; and produced by a large variety of the 
most wonderful, intricate, and beautiful combinations of 
force, till the mind is almost overwhelmed in its attempts 
to grasp the whole scheme of operations. Bodies not 
only change place in the mass, as when a ball receives a 
blow from a club, and is thrown off into the distance \ 
but their minutest particles are variously wrought upon, 
and tossed to and fro \ they expand and contract by per- 
fectly systematical orderly processes, and are brittle, elas- 



84 The Constitution of Matter. 

tic, ductile, malleable, exercise chemical affinities and an- 
tipathies, and do everything, in short, according to estab- 
lished mathematical modes of motion. If a large cord 
were divided at a given point into a dozen separate and 
dissimilar strands, a movement communicated at the end 
of the cord would not only be carried on to the point of 
division, but it would be distributed to each of the dozen 
strands, and would move them all; but the motion of 
each, as in musical instruments, would be varied accord- 
ing to specific differences in their size, tension, etc. So 
if matter has almost numberless modes of capacity for 
motion, allied to as many modes of force, one or all of 
these may be at any time excited, and all possibly, at the 
same time; the right conditions for this being fulfilled. 
The ordinary movements of matter, as the swaying of 
trees by the wind and the passage of bodies from one 
place to another, are forms of motion obvious to all. 

Organized bodies have capacities for growth and disso- 
lution ; processes of incessant change, carried on during 
their whole organized existence ; yet all these are to the 
senses invisible and recondite processes, which we have 
not yet been able to altogether fathom. The little plant 
has made progress since yesterday ; it is even perceptibly 
larger than it was an hour ago ; it is constantly throw- 
ing off gases and absorbing nutritive matter from earth 
and air ; steadily giving evidence of unresting modes of 
motion. These changes can be tested at frequent inter- 
vals ; can be weighed, measured, and computed ; and 
the mind can comprehend enough of them to feel as 
much assurance as to their phenomena as it does of 
the existence of the plant itself. There are modes of 
organic process radically unlike those of the inorganic 
world. These differences will be treated of in their proper 
connection. Matter in general can be appropriated by 
organic forces and used in the service of the organism ; 
so that we may infer that all inorganic matter has capaci- 



The Constitution of Matter. 85 

ties for being so allied to organisms as, for the time be- 
ing, to become itself organized and to aid in the discharge 
of organic functions. 

But invisible or molecular motions of various kinds 
play a prominent part in all the changes of matter, or- 
ganic and inorganic alike. The movements which answer 
to some of the most powerful forces of nature, as light, 
heat, magnetism, and electricity, are movements of invis- 
ible particles of matter. We perceive the net results ; 
and in these cognize something both of the nature of the 
forces as properties, and of their resulting processes. 
Bodies are curiously constructed instruments, which may 
be played upon by the forces of matter ; whatever be the 
mode of acting force, the instrument can respond only 
in its own way; yet every instrument is adjusted to 
various forces, so that each can control it to a certain 
degree, and can play upon it after its own method. 

The science of forces has received an immense stimu- 
lus of late from the important discoveries of eminent 
men, verifying intuitions and hypotheses of equally emir 
nent predecessors. In the language of Professor You- 
mans; " a pure principle (gravitation) forms the immaterial 
foundation of the universe," while heat, light, electricity, 
magnetism, and chemical affinity are, " an order of purely 
immaterial forces." There are efficient properties in mat- 
ter which produce motion, and which are adapted, obvi- 
ously, to the direct end of producing motion. Force may 
be defined as anything, which, the right conditions being 
supplied, is capable of producing motion or change of 
motion. No motion is ever destroyed, but like force itself, 
motion is indestructible. It is communicated from atom 
to atom ; but the whole coordinated constitution of each 
atom, and its inherent amount of force, is not communicated. 
On the contrary, the atoms upon which any mode of force 
acts, producing a corresponding mode of motion in them, 
in their turn react again \ and as all action and reaction 



86 The Constitution of Matter. 

are constituted equal and opposite, the reaction is a 
counter impulse exactly equal to that which was communi- 
cated to itself. Force, as a property, it is maintained in 
these " Studies" is not communicated ; but simply ex- 
changes one of its coordinated processes for another, so 
that the amount of force remains always exactly the same 
in every atom, and it always retains all its own special 
constitutional adjustments of forces and capacities. Noth- 
ing seems to me more evident than that force, considered 
as a property, is inconvertible and untransferable, re- 
maining always with its own proper substance ; but pro- 
cesses or modes of motion, correlated to like processes 
in other atoms, have power to excite these, transforming, 
for the time being, other modes of motion into this which 
it excites. Substances do not exchange forces, but they 
exchange modes of process. All modes of quantitative 
motion are mutually convertible into all other modes of 
like motion, both within any given atom and interchange- 
ably between all atoms ; but again, I repeat, that the prop- 
erty which produces these motions or processes is not 
convertible, but is so adjusted to everything else that it 
always receives again exactly as much as it gives, and 
thus through the universal principle of equal action and 
reaction, the balance of properties is always maintained. 
This is simply illustrated by the ball which bounds back 
again from the wall, making its angles of incidence and 
reflection exactly equal. The ball communicates motion 
to the wall, and the wall reacts again upon the ball with 
mathematically equal force. 

Special modes of force can act, obviously, only when 
all the adjustments necessary to their activity are fulfilled. 
It is now generally assumed by chemists that the mole- 
cules of all substances in the gaseous state occupy the 
same volume. This conclusion implies that there are the 
same number of molecules in equal volumes of different 
substances, and that the elastic tension of every molecule 



The Constitution of Matter. 87 

is the same in all gases, and yet how different is the 
combination of forces in the formation of the various 
classes of objects. 

There is at least one mode of force which is always in 
steady and uniform exercise. Professor Faraday says that, 
so far as we can perceive, gravitation is " inconvertible in 
its nature and unchanging in its manifestations. " A per- 
manent affection of matter, it undergoes no change, and 
the conditions for its activity being permanently realized 
it is always in uniform exercise. But each mode of force, 
whether like gravity, so adapted to all other things as to 
be always operative, or like some special chemical affinity 
which pertains to but one specific form of its own sub- 
stance, and can act only when in the presence of some 
other substance coordinated with itself; each mode of force 
is itself equally inconvertible and alike mathematically de- 
termined in all its convertible processes. All force in 
action will produce motion, and the same quantity of force 
will always produce the same amount of any given kind 
of motion under like conditions. The special motion is 
the special form of process which the force inaugurates ; 
and all process is continuous, indestructible, and merely a 
modification of something which has gone before, and is 
carried on under the law of equal action and reaction, to 
be again modified into something which shall come after. 

Matter, apparently, possesses two broad types of consti- 
tutional forces : extensive force, by the operation of which 
all bodies are extended, and contractive force, by the opera- 
tion of which all bodies are contracted. If the contractive 
modes of force alone were in exercise, all matter would 
tend to aggregation, to more and more cohesion and con- 
densation, till the whole would be finally compacted into 
one unvibrating mass ; but the extensive modes are forever 
conjointly at work, expanding every molecule or projecting 
it into space ; working through a countless variety of pro- 
cesses. Extensive forces alone would dissipate all solids, 



88 The Constitution of Matter. 

diffusing the universe into unlimited space ; while the two 
coordinated types maintain the universe as it is, holding 
all processes in equilibrium. These two modes are in 
reality one, each being a reaction of the other. Light and 
heat are extensive forces, which pertain, apparently, to all 
matter ; but they can act vigorously only under adapted 
conditions, as in combustion or in the radiation of light 
and heat from the sun. The sunbeam has long been 
studied with utmost care ; it has been variously tested till 
science has determined that each ray of heat and color is 
a separate succession of coordinated waves of motion 
sent out by the radiating body, and communicated in 
straight lines to any other body which is so adapted to it 
in condition as to enable it to become a recipient. But 
it is the motion which is thus communicated, not the orig- 
inal, motion-determining force, which remains unchanged — 
a permanent mode of energy pertaining to its own sub- 
stance. Heat and light, as modes of motion, are thus to 
be distinguished from the persisting modes of force ; which 
possess in themselves a permanent power to transform 
other modes of motion into these. 

The medium which transmits the curiously adapted 
series of moving wavelets, which we call light and heat, 
must be itself matter, though incredibly refined and ethe- 
rial ; it obeys the laws of quantity, possessing its own 
forces and capacities, and is the material bond between 
gross ordinary bodies. The same ether, or adjusted por- 
tions of it, must convey the converse line of motion pro- 
duced by the contraction of substances largely endowed 
with gravity or other contractive forces. No line of con- 
tractive motion has yet been experimentally discovered ; 
but it must, I think, be presumed to exist, and we may 
yet make acquaintance with it as intimate as we have 
already done with the converse line of the sunbeam. 
Much evidence can be given in favor of the theory that 
gravity acts in lines, drawing in all directions from farthest 



The Constitution of Matter. 89 

space to the attracting, that is, the contracting particle. 
Many special molecules thus cooperating, as in a solid 
mass, the centre of gravity becomes the centre of the 
gravitative force towards which all bodies whatever are 
irresistibly drawn. 

That two or more masses of matter can act upon each 
other at a distance, without some direct material commu- 
nication, is in violation of all known laws of matter ; l but 
motion may be produced in an elastic ether by the sudden 
contraction of molecules, and this mode of motion, reach- 
ing on into remote space, like a contracting cord, would 
draw with its own little power all masses which should 
lie in its path. Such a mode of motion, like gravity, could 
act only in direct lines, and could never turn aside for 
any obstacle ; but would entangle everything indiscrimi- 
nately within its tightening lines. The contracting of an 
elastic substance, as India-rubber when it has been forci- 
bly drawn asunder, may convey some idea of the possible 
movement in the gravitating beam ; but there must be 
successive wavelets of contractive motion, spreading out- 
ward from the dense body largely endowed with gravita- 
tive force. Gravitation is thus regarded as a reaction 
against extensive or expansive modes of force. Like all 
forces which act only in straight lines, gravity, running out 
from a point in all directions into space, from the neces- 
sity of the case, could produce effects only in an inverse 
ratio to the square of the distance from the attracting 
body. Heat and light, for example, are radiated from all 
points of the heated and luminous body and necessarily 
more and more diffused as they spread outwards \ contrac- 
tive motion would illustrate the same law — as all the lines 
of motion converged towards the contracting body, the less 
distance would they be apart from each other, and the 
greater the number in a given space ; so that all bodies 
must mutually draw each other with a force inverse to the 
square of their distances. 

1 Dr. Faraday's Conservation of Force. 



90 The Constitution of Matter. 

The molecules of the inter-stellar ether which serves as 
the conducting medium, are supposed to have their own 
modes of force, so adjusted to ordinary matter as to co- 
operate readily under all circumstances. In the radiation 
of light and heat, the molecular forces coact always in the 
line of motion, ultimating in a polarity of the conduct- 
ing medium ; if the line of motion is changed by any 
intervening cause, the polarity of the medium is also 
changed. Why may we not, then, suppose that polarity 
of the ether results in the conduction of gravitative mo- 
tion • each molecule of the medium cooperating in a defi- 
nite direction with its next neighbor, thus drawing together 
the dense bodies which they connect. We must be con- 
tent with more or less mere hypothesis in relation to 
most molecular processes until we can literally perceive 
ultimate molecules, and distinguish their motions through 
the senses, as we now perceive masses and their move- 
ments ; but, marvelous as are the wonders revealed by the 
microscope, we are still very far from such an attainment. 
We must reason, therefore, from the amassed results, and 
correct our theories by the known facts. Some theory of 
contraction is evidently needed in explanation of the phe- 
nomena of gravitation. 

I regard the cooperation of forces as comprehending not 
only the push and counter-push between atom and atom, 
but also the push and the withdrawal of that push by 
every atom singly and collectively, when not impeded in 
the completion of the process. Every molecule, it is 
believed, is itself endowed with the two reactionary types 
of the one identical force, which together keep it forever 
pulsing to and fro like the panting heart of a live creature, 
each atom a microcosm of the universe, with its eternal 
ebb and flow, its systole and diastole. We have endeavored 
to show that while extension is a universal capacity of mat- 
ter, yet that there is a lowest extreme of extension, a con- 
stitutional minimum beyond which contractive force can 



The Constitution of Matter. 91 

produce no results. It is probable, also, that there is an 
established maximum of extension for each atom, and 
that, although every atom must be extended, yet that the 
greatest amount of that extension is not indefinite but 
definite. Extensive force, then, if not impeded in its 
action, could extend its atom only to a definite amount ; 
there its ability would end, the atom being constituted for 
extension so far and no further. This maximum of exten- 
sion reached, other atoms not interfering, the reactionary 
contractive force would carry it back again to its mini- 
mum ; and thus it would beat to and fro in ceaseless 
unrest. Thus there are coordinated tides of action and 
reaction, flowing out to the boundaries and again beating 
back to the axis of the atom. We know that the law of 
action and reaction is everywhere equal and opposite • and 
it is at least possible that every atom is so constituted as 
to pulse to and fro forever if not externally impeded. 

I have assumed that there are indivisible atoms or 
molecules, which are centres of properties. The various 
processes by which bodies are modified presuppose divisi- 
bility as a capacity of aggregated matter. The possibility 
of a division of masses is an integral part of the general 
scheme. While one body is a solid, another a fluid, and 
another a gas, here are necessary resulting divisions. Ex- 
tension in one class of bodies is secured by growth and in 
another by accretions ; then there are special constitutions 
and innumerable modifications, all grounded upon divisi- 
bility, as coordinated with other properties. Accordingly 
we find masses constituted for division and subdivision to 
such a degree that men have been unable to determine 
whether or not there is any limit to this capacity. Logi- 
cians have contended both for and against the infinite 
divisibility of matter ; but, as a question of fact, it can 
with our present faculties be settled only by a logical 
intuition. As the principles of extension and contraction 
mutually limit each other, so the one force operative in 



92 The Constitution of Matter. 

these adapted modes must pertain inseparably to one sub- 
stantial centre. I regard molecules not as mere centres 
of force, but each as indivisible absolute substance and 
property, constituted by coordinated modes of innate force 
and capacity ! The principle of divisibility may well apply 
simply as between molecule and molecule, while each ulti- 
mate molecule itself remains indivisible. This, too, is the 
conclusion to which science may be said already to have 
arrived ; at least it is now the prevailing scientific theory, 
sustained by many incidental corroborative facts. The doc- 
trine of definite proportions, as accepted and explained by 
chemistry, leads to this conclusion. It has been experi- 
mentally determined that a compound, when pure, contains 
invariably the same proportions of its constituents ; and 
this is true of every known compound, whether formed by 
nature or art. The weight of a compound atom is obtained 
by adding together the atomic weights of its constituents ; 
and though two or more substances may combine in dif- 
ferent proportions, forming a variety of compounds com- 
posed of the same elements, yet these elements though 
found to unite in different ratios, are yet always in definite 
proportions ; either one atom with one atom, or one of one 
kind with two or more of another, or by any amounts of 
atoms which are integral multiples of unity. The pro- 
portions of the substances which act upon each other 
chemically, greatly influence the nature of the new com- 
pound. No adequate explanation can be given of this 
very beautiful system of definite combinations except that 
ultimate, indivisible atoms combine in various proportions. 
If there be indivisible atoms, these atoms must be consti- 
tuted in groups, each group differing from all the others ; 
but each individual of a group exactly like every other of 
its kind in all its characteristics, so that any combination 
of atoms will be, in every respect, like every other combi- 
nation of its kind. 

But each ultimate atom of matter is not only constituted 



TTte Constitution of Matter. 93 

by its own special characteristics; but it is also made 
eminently social, or cooperative with its neighbors in all 
its functions ; so that, probably, no atom is left to expand 
and contract under the unimpeded action of its own prop- 
erties. It is crowded against on every side by other 
atoms whose processes are so coordinated with its own 
tha-t it may never be able to reach either its maximum or 
minimum of extension, but must vibrate always, by diverse 
processes, somewhere between the two, in response to 
kindred processes from without, as modified by its own 
proper modes. 

It is the first law of motion, that " a body, if acted on 
by no external force, remains at rest ; or if in motion, con- 
tinues to move uniformly in the same direction." Simple 
expansive and contractive forces cannot change their own 
centres of gravity as separate atoms, nor yet the centre of 
gravity of a cohesive mass whose forces are all cooperative 
as one ; so that if any body were left to itself, its centre of 
gravity would remain always at rest, and if started forward 
by some impulse communicated from without, its other 
modes being for the time transformed into this, there 
would be no power within itself to change again ; but it 
must move on and on indefinitely till it should meet some- 
thing else to which it could communicate this new mode, 
receiving in exchange some other correlated mode. 

But the action of any force upon any other atom of mat- 
ter than its own, does tend to change the centre of posi- 
tion in space of the foreign body ; it is adapted, not so 
much either to enlarge or contract, or by any process to 
change the internal structure of the foreign substance, as to 
move it off into space, thus creating a new process — that of 
mechanical motion. The body thus moved, that is, some 
of whose forces are transformed into the mechanical force 
which carries it forward, if left to itself, would continue on 
in a straight line and with a uniform velocity ; but, beating 
against obstructions, the mechanical motion becomes again 



94 The Constitution of Matter. 

transformed either into heat or some other correlated mode, 
or is thrown back again at an angle of reflection corre- 
sponding to the angle of incidence ; and thus the perpetual 
interchange of coordinated processes, among the variously 
adjusted classes and states of matter, produce the endless 
succession of change and variety in the existing universe. 
In this complicated and rigidly mathematical adaptation 
of things we find an endless widening of the facts indi- 
cating a broad, intelligent plan, combining unity of end 
with an admirable diversity of ways and means. 

The conservation of all force is one of the great truths 
which modern science has experimentally as well as ration- 
ally demonstrated ; and closely allied to this is the doc- 
trine of the correlation or mutual convertibility or ex- 
changeability of all modes of motion, both in the same 
and in different substances. All modes of force and their 
processes are quantitatively related, so that one process 
is always exchanged for another in definite proportions. 
Thus heat and mechanical motion are mathematically cor- 
related ; and it is found by elaborate, careful experiments, 
that 772 units of mechanical force are equal to one unit of 
heat; that is, 772 pounds of weight, falling one foot, repre- 
sents mechanical or mass- moving force, which, when trans- 
formed into heat, as it is by the fall, is sufficient to raise 
one pound of water i° F. This is called the mechanical 
equivalent of heat. Heat, in its turn, can be transformed 
into mechanical motion, always yielding the proportion 
required by this law of quantitative relations. It is also 
shown, to the satisfaction of those best acquainted with the 
subject, that the modes of process produced by light, elec- 
tricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, are all correlated 
with each other, and with all other modes of process, and 
are quantitatively convertible. 

When coordinated substances are brought together, or 
are related through other connecting substances, the result 
is sensible movement, as in chemical, electrical, or magnetic 



The Constitution of Matter. 95 

action, or in the radiation and conduction of heat, light, or 
any other mode of process, or in the action of gravitation. 
It is not necessary for our purpose that we should dwell 
further upon the simple modes or the combinations of ex- 
isting forces and capacities, and their resulting processes. 
It is enough if I am able to show that all these modes 
must have been planned in thought and realized in things ; 
and that the modifications of things ', therefore, are not self- 
existent but created. 

I assume that atomic property is something intrinsically 
indivisible and inherent in its own indivisible atomic sub- 
stance ; but that it has been coordinated by thought and 
power in many varying but definite modes. The atomic 
substance and property, together indivisible and self-exis- 
tent, has been wrought into ever-changing manifestations 
through a multiplicity of coordinated modes and their pro- 
cesses. Thus each atom may be studied by us either as 
comprising modes of force which can excite adapted move- 
ments in its own or other atoms, or as possessing capaci- 
ties which are receptive to motions thus produced. All 
these modes of property are found to be mathematically 
related and belonging to two mutually limiting types — the 
one producing the ebb tide of universal movement, and 
the other the corresponding flow ; together maintaining 
everything in virtual equilibrium, and within its preor- 
dained boundaries. 

All extensive movement can be deflected from its course, 
or absorbed and transformed by adapted capacities. Thus, 
in passing from one medium to another, as from air to 
water, the direct line of light is broken. Every object 
absorbs its own adapted portions of the sunbeam, reflect- 
ing the remainder ; and all outward motion, whether of 
the mass or molecule, can be turned from its course or 
transformed to some other mode by various resisting 
obstacles. On the contrary, gravity and probably all con- 
tractive modes of force know no obstacles, but they knit 



96 The Constitution of Matter. 

up everything alike in their imperative modes of regres- 
sion. Hence we regard gravity as always operative ; but 
in the broadest sense, all force is perpetually operative. 
All unsentient processes are necessarily reactions from 
something which has gone before. Neither new proper- 
ties, nor new, that is original, unproduced movements ever 
begin to be ; but one mode of motion is transformed into 
another through the intervention of constitutional forces 
and capacities, which must, evidently, have been coordi- 
nated for the very purpose of effecting such transforma- 
tions. All quantitative modes are lifeless, unconscious, 
irresponsible, and they act always mechanically as they 
have been constituted to act. The laws of nature are 
immutable, but they are simply the established coordinated 
facts of nature. 

Certain properties of matter, like extension, have a per- 
ceived existence as actual objective properties ; but others, 
such as taste, color, sound, or resistance, are not simply 
effects realized in the object ; but effects produced upon 
ourselves by something which does exist in the object. 
Thus colors are modes of objective motion in such rela- 
tions to the human eye as to produce within it correlative 
processes, which, communicated to the mind, we call red, 
yellow, or blue. Sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch ; 
contact, in all its varieties ; are so many modes of motion 
communicated from the object through material media to 
the percipient mind. There are coordinations relating 
mind and matter ; and the living mind is necessarily the 
appreciative partner whenever it is itself one term of a 
relation. All unsentient force is simply quantitative or 
extensive; but sentient modes are also qualitative or 
intensive. We estimate the one wholly by quantity, but 
the other both by quantity and quality. We indeed speak 
often of the qualities of material things; but we really 
mean by it the quality of the effect produced upon our- 
selves. Thus sugar is said to have the quality of sweet- 



The Constitution of Matter, 97 

ness ; yet everything pertaining to the sugar can be esti- 
mated by amounts ; but the kind or degree of sensation 
which we experience in tasting it cannot be measured by 
any quantity. It is a mode which cannot be computed by 
amounts, but by the kind or intensity of the experience ; 
that is, not simply by the quantity of the modification, 
but also by the kind or quality of it. This class of rela- 
tions will be more fully considered in connection with 
mind and its coordinations. It is enough to say here that 
I use the term quality, in these studies, as pertaining only 
to sentient or living experience, and the modifications of the 
conscious mind ; while it is held that all unsentient modifi- 
cations can always be estimated by quantities. 

There are relations subsisting between bodies in which 
mind has no other direct concern than that of an intelli- 
gent observer, in which it is as nearly a disinterested third 
party as is possible in a universe where all processes are 
correlated more or less remotely. The action of elements 
upon each other in a chemical compound are almost com- 
pletely independent of the observing spectator ; yet even 
here there exist relations which enable the mind to cognize 
the matter and its processes ; and these relations are largely 
dependent on material chains of connection between them. 
The mind perceives through the senses of the body, and 
between these and the material object there is direct com- 
munication through adapted material processes. Thus 
mind is enabled to cognize matter in its essential nature 
and relations. 

The pure principles of things pertain to mind as much 
as to matter ; and the two are often coordinated in and 
through them. Thus the mind perceives all the princi- 
ples of quantity, as pure rational principles rather than 
as affections of things 5 it is often able, therefore, to con- 
sider them impartially and with no personal bias. This 
impersonal method of studying the material world is of 
very great importance, as it enables one to study the re- 



98 The Constitution of Matter. 

lations of things independent of personal considerations, 
and purely as matters of scientific interest. 

We can perceive, for example, that from the necessity 
of the case, extension could have been nothing but a pure 
rational concept, unless made real as a property of things ; 
and that force also is an immaterial somewhat, which 
could have no actual existence independent of substance. 
A force of nothing would be itself nothing. To assert 
that force or even extension had no actual existence in 
absolute being, before the present constitution of things 
was established, would be to transcend our knowledge on 
the subject ; but if they were realities at all, they must 
have been absolute properties of being ; and they have 
become modifications of the existing universe by special 
relative adjustments in the present order of things. Cre- 
ation is a rigid mathematical coordination of modifications, 
superinduced upon self-existent being — that at least is 
the light in which it is regarded in the present essay. 

It cannot be said that mathematical principles are ac- 
tualized in any one substance, or indeed in all substances 
inclusive, in exactly the same sense in which extension and 
motion are characteristics of matter. Mathematical prin- 
ciples are realized rather as the resultant properties or re- 
lations of things. An innate property is something in the 
thing — its very and essential nature ; but the relation is 
only part of the comprehensive scheme or plan in accord- 
ance with which innate properties are made to coexist 
and coact. The distinction is obvious and fundamental. 
Thus actualized relations are elements of the actualized 
schemes in which all the concrete modes of things are 
contained and harmonized. The relation of parent and 
child, brother and sister, neighbor and neighbor, are 
actual relations belonging to the existing scheme of 
things ; but these relations are none of them the innate 
properties of parent, child, brother, sister, or neighbor. 



The Constitution of Matter. 99 

They arise as resultants from the general coordinations of 
the scheme, and embrace all parents and all children, etc. 
So all mathematical principles are actualized as an unde- 
viating logical system, quantitatively regulating all pos- 
sible modifications. Everything is found to exist coor- 
dinated in one established universal arithmetic ! 

This system of rigid quantitativeness not only coordi- 
nates all known substances and properties, with their out- 
growing processes : but it also coordinates all outside 
contingencies and conditions, necessarily embraced in a 
completed, harmonious scheme of creation. These out- 
side conditions or resultants arising from a logical ra- 
tional necessity, are inherent and actualized parts of the 
existing scheme of modifications. For example, if bodies 
are extended, they must be extended somewhere or in 
distinct places or relative spaces. The place of a body 
is its relative position ; and if the body itself is extended, 
then its place of being is extended also, of logical neces- 
sity. Extended place is space ; and actualized extension 
originates actualized space. Then the mathematical rela- 
tions of changing divisible bodies, extending to differing 
degrees, by unlike processes, under the influence of many 
modifications of properties, require also mathematical 
coordinations of divisible, related spaces. Thus spatial 
ratios and measures are as actual and tangible as are the 
substances occupying those spaces. But divisions of 
relative spaces cannot, in the nature of the case, be innate 
properties of relative being. On the contrary, they con- 
tain all substances. The sum of all relative spaces is 
space, as a whole — one actualized element of the creative 
scheme. 

Time is another coordinated element. To say that any- 
thing exists, is to say that it exists now or in present time. 

As all matter is constituted to exist in relative space, 
so it is also constituted to exist in relative time. Dura- 
tion or eternity is only continuous present time — absolute 



ioo The Constitution of Matter. 

time. The actualized scheme of time is an unceasing 
now with its relations of past and future \ and duration is 
as really an ever-present continuous time, as being is an 
ever-existing somewhat. 

Space, with its relative dimensions of length, breadth, 
and thickness, is inseparable from extended being ; and 
it must exist with being, or else it could have no existence 
even in thought or as a pure principle. So time or dura- 
tion, with its relative past and future, must be dependent 
for its actual existence upon actual being. The constitu- 
tional changes of the present universe, at once simultane- 
ous and successive, are all mathematically coordinated in 
time ; and the divisions of time are all measurable, and, 
like those of space, related in quantity to all the modifi- 
cations of the universe. Every measure of any one of 
these quantities can be definitely expressed in terms of 
each of the others, and they are all so mutually depend- 
ent that neither can actually exist without all the others. 
Time and space are neither real substances, nor real 
innate properties of substance : they are simply the real- 
ized fundamental, rational facts of the existing creation. 

To believe that either time or space, whether regarded 
as absolute or relative, can be anything purely in and of 
themselves, to me seems preposterous, however high the 
authority which asserts otherwise. As abstract principles 
or facts, how could they exist independent of a mind 
which originated them ? Do you say that they may have 
an absolute existence, a self-existence independent of 
everything else, — then each of them is an absolute noth- 
ing, an infinite nonentity, if one might be allowed to join 
words so paradoxical. Without Being, either absolute 
and self-existent, or related as it is in the present universe, 
how could time or space or quantity acquire even the dig- 
nity of Hamilton's infinite negations ; since there would 
be nothing positive by which they would be negatived. 
We conceive of them all only as the containing and con- 



The Constitution of Matter. 101 

trolling relations of things ; and though we may imagine 
all real existences to be annihilated, and yet that time, 
space, and quantitativeness would remain, yet they would 
remain only as unrealities, as absolute nothings. Take 
away all thought of them, which is something, and nothing 
remains. True, there would still be unlimited nothing- 
ness ; but can we call that something ? can we call it a 
veritable existence ? I can conceive of substance and 
property proper, as self-existent necessary realities ; but 
I cannot conceive of time, space, or quantity as realities 
at all except as actualized relations of modified being, 
as resultant properties. Are they, then, infinite, absolute ? 
They have, as principles, no limitations ; they are un- 
bounded ; and like all pure principles, they are unlimited 
in the kind to which they pertain ; and therefore as pure 
principles they may be infinite and absolute to any mind 
which can grasp the infinite and absolute ; and they may, 
therefore, be infinite in the creative thought. As actual- 
ized relations of the present universe, and as perceived 
by ourselves, they are doubtless finite and relative. In- 
finity cannot be reasonably predicated of the contingent 
and relative. The practically realized scheme of things, 
even with all its vastness of perfect internal harmony, 
cannot properly be termed either infinite or absolute. 

A faultless universal arithmetic has evidently been 
rigidly applied to the entire constitution of matter. Its 
whole mechanism, in every minutest part, has been 
built up on mathematical principles ; and all its charac- 
teristics, from the most simple to the most complex, are 
mathematically related. If there is but little rigid adhe- 
rence to primitive geometrical forms manifested in the 
growth of living organisms, it is because the principles 
of beautiful variety (shall I say of varied sentient good) 
transcend even the principles of quantity ; but the one 
class never ignore nor annul the other. Each living thing 
has its own typical mathematical form and proportions, 



102 The Constitution of Matter. 

from which it never widely varies. The most highly or- 
nate variations only illustrate a generic unity. Like a 
pictorial alphabet in a child's primer, with its wonderful 
departures from the original twenty-six letters, yet built 
up unmistakably on the old primitive groundwork of 
plain English vowels and consonants, so nature establishes 
all her embellishments on a very angular mathematical 
alphabet Living organisms are under the rule of quan- 
tity ; but a higher rule is also predominant. The ideal 
skeleton of every graceful tree, and leaf, and flower, of 
every roly-poly cherub baby, and of each ever-changing 
cloud even, is clearly made up of as many and rigid 
angles, triangles, and right lines as a whole book of 
geometry. A pine-tree, in its tout ensemble, and in every 
leaf, branch, and cone, is an illustrated volume of conic 
sections. 1 The leaves of each species of plant have a 
persistent order of arrangement which is peculiar to itself, 
and by which it may always be distinguished at a glance. 
"This order is subject to certain laws, and maybe ex- 
pressed by an arithmetical formula. 2 Flowers also are 
systematically placed ; and provided for by prevised ad- 
justments as beautiful as their own colors. 

The little living mollusk in the building up of its shell 
is found to follow a perfect geometrical progression as to 
the size of the whorls, and the distance between contigu- 
ous whorls, winding its dwelling in a uniform direction 
through the space around its axis. Wasps, bees, birds, 
and even fishes, are instructed architects of the highest 
mathematical order. The ancient Platonic maxim asserts 
that Deity proceeds always by geometry. Since that early 
day the physicists have demonstrated that the forms, dis- 
tances, and motions of the worlds are fixed in numerical 
cooperative relations ; and that even imponderable forces, 
and the minute living creatures revealed only through the 

1 McCosh, Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation. 

2 Figuier, The Vegetable World. 



The Constitution of Matter. 103 

microscope, are all alike mathematically coordinated. One 
of the most remunerative of human studies is the search 
after quantitative ratios and relations as we find them 
exemplified in nature under an endless variety of condi- 
tions. To find a determinate order of things cropping out 
in the most unexpected modes, regulating alike the colors 
of the simplest flowers and the wondrously complicated 
movements and structure of the grandest worlds, imparts 
a keen zest and stimulus to the mind which perhaps noth- 
ing else can parallel. Science has traced these mathemat- 
ical analogies in many directions, and often with the con- 
scientious accuracy of exact demonstration. 

If a universal quantitative cooperation can be estab- 
lished between all modes of matter, coordinating all 
its properties and relations with their resulting pro- 
cesses, this fact must be the highest and most ultimate 
truth of physical science. Add to this the coordina- 
tions of the sentient world, of living minds, with all 
their intellectual and moral adjustments, and the cycle 
of interest is complete. It is not my present purpose 
to enter upon this subject. We need only remember 
here, that each organism is under the control of other 
than merely quantitative force, and that evidences of 
thought-adaptations are found equally in the organic 
and inorganic kingdoms. There is as much orderly 
arrangement resulting from unsentient, wholly mechanical 
force as from any other. We know that each mineral, 
when not disturbed in the process, assumes its own dis- 
tinctive crystalline forms, each crystal bounded by plane 
surfaces whose sides are parallel \ and that all fluids and 
gases have perfectly orderly processes of modification. 
The only wisdom manifested in all these beautiful arrange- 
ments necessarily lies far back in the scheme of thought, 
and in the wonderful power which was able to consummate 
and maintain this scheme in things. Unsentient matter 
itself is only clay in the hands of the Supreme Architect — 



104 The Constitution of Matter. 

its innate forces being wholly unwitting and useless except 
as coordinated to act in furthering intelligent ends. 

It only remains, then, to add that all process is found to 
have been progress, if judged by the steadily increasing 
sum of results. Science decides that there has been a 
gradual increase of heterogeneous bodies from homoge- 
neous elements. This earth is now in a state of higher and 
more varied maturity than ever before ; and this is not 
only true of its organisms, but it is equally so of its inor- 
ganic structure. There is found to have been an orderly, 
regular, and successive deposition of rock strata over the 
whole surface of the globe ; and also, as a general rule, 
the more recent the strata the greater the similarity of its 
fossil contents to existing organisms. It is found that 
the whole crust of the earth is steadily becoming more 
and more rich and complex in varieties of all kinds, in- 
organic and organic alike. The old Plutonic rocks, sup- 
posed to have been hardened by the action of heat beneath 
the surface, and afterwards uplifted by volcanic or other 
influences, are being gradually metamorphosed or crumbled 
and deposited with other ingredients in sedimentary strata. 
We have the metamorphic crystalline schists of many 
varieties, probably transformed sedimentary rocks, and the 
processes by which these and similar results are secured 
are still going forward continually, producing more and 
more heterogeneity. 

All known modes of force cooperate to produce changes. 
Heat and light seem at the first glance to produce only 
momentary influences ; but the sum of their effects is 
to us absolutely immeasurable. Even the gentlest rains 
wear the earth into channels, and falling into the crev- 
ices and working their way down even into the deep- 
est fissures, they abstract elements from the hardest 
rocks, depositing them elsewhere. Alternate heat and 
moisture weaken and perpetually crumble away all masses ; 



The Constitution of Matter. 105 

chemical action is continually eating with a canker- 
ing tooth into already existing forms, and as continually 
renewing and creating others. Land-slips, avalanches, 
glaciers, volcanoes, floods, tempests, fires, and all manner 
of convulsions, have been at work since the beginning ; 
and yet all geologists turn from such apparently chaotic 
actions to the innumerable evidences of a slow and steady, 
orderly progress with which even these violent actions are 
also coordinated. The steady encroachment of the ocean 
upon the land through the ceaseless wearing action of its 
waves, the debris deposited in it by streams of running 
water, the building up of land by the coral family and 
other inhabitants of the sea, and the growth and decay of 
vegetable and animal products on land and in the water, 
are all quiet, steady influences producing both change and 
advance. Higher and higher types of organisms have 
arisen in a very slowly ascending series since the begin- 
ning 1 and if the early dwellers in the soft, muddy world 
of very long ago — the huge reptiles and trilobites — have 
no successors of their kind, there are animals of a much 
more perfect organism inhabiting a more highly developed 
globe. 

It can scarcely be believed now, by any one familiar with 
science, that the universe was instantaneously created by 
simple fiat, or that it could have been brought into nearly 
its present form and condition within six days, or in any 
short period of time. The most orthodox now reject this 
literal pre-geologic interpretation of Genesis. Vast periods 
of time, which must certainly be counted by many centu- 
ries, are known to have passed away before the world was 
fitted to become the abode of man. A gradual step by 
step process of change has gone on everywhere in both the 
inorganic and organic kingdoms ; while the changes pre- 
ceding any organism must have been even greater than 
these ; so that no one, with the enduring evidences of. all 
this accessible to him, can well intelligently doubt either 



106 The Constitution of Matter. 

that the present centre of the earth is still a molten, liquid 
mass, or that the whole solar system once existed in a 
state of vapor. 

The interior rocks, which are generally, if not univer- 
sally extended everywhere beneath our feet, are found to 
have been undoubtedly cooled from igneous fusion ; the 
globular form of the earth is such as would result from a 
soft mass revolving on its axis ; and the interior masses 
are found by careful examination in various metallic mines, 
salt and coal pits, etc., to be greatly hotter than the parts 
at the surface. The mutual action and counteraction of 
heat and gravity within the earth itself cannot well be 
overlooked. Heat, in all its modes of action an expansive 
force, prevents the great condensation of dense matter at 
the centre \ and yet pressure has produced greater density- 
there than elsewhere, while at the surface radiation of heat 
has resulted in solidification to a large extent ; and thus 
are many modes of coacting force now maintaining essen- 
tially the present condition of the globe. 

Almost everything now existing on the surface of the 
earth is in a compound state, which is preeminently a con- 
densed or cohesive state. The sing'e element, oxygen, 
composes almost half of the whole amount of the ponder- 
able substance of the globe. If this gas alone were freed 
from its compounds, it would immediately occupy a space 
two thousand times as great as it now does ; and thus one 
entire half of the world, at least, would be resolved into 
gas. Other substances, released from combination under 
certain atmospheric pressures, expand in a similar degree, 
so that scientific authorities assert that it is not improbable 
that all the substances on the earth if freed from their com- 
pounds would enter into the gaseous state. There is much 
probability that our solar system was once a diffused 
nebula which has been gradually brought into its present 
relations through the continuous action of variously coordi- 
nated properties ; and we may even assume that all solar 



The Constitution of Matter. 107 

systems once existed undistinguished in one universal, 
homogeneous, exceedingly diffusive mass. 

The rational creative power which could constitute every 
individual atom after its kind ; and could so coordinate 
the whole as to secure a nett result so systematic, so per- 
fectly orderly in its processes, and so obviously one great 
whole; with the most admirable, perfect adjustment of 
parts, as in so much of the universe as is even now com- 
prehended by man, is certainly not inferior to that mere 
omnipotence of fiat which was formerly assumed to be the 
sole creative agency. To work by modes and processes is 
not only more philosophical, but also more intellectually 
and morally admirable, and more eminently appropriate to 
the character of a rational and benevolent Being. Des- 
cartes has his theory of " Vortices," Laplace his " Meca- 
nique Celeste," and Newton his " Philosophise Naturalis 
Principia Mathematica ; " each by theory or demonstra- 
tion trying to show what might have been or what is and 
must be the explanation of various phenomena, if the 
universe is one general coordinated mathematical fact. 
Hypotheses can be made to cover almost every phenom- 
enon ; and even rigid mathematics has long since settled 
far more than enough to leave no doubt on any mind able 
to investigate the subject, that everything material is 
mutually adapted to everything else, according to the 
highest and most accurate principles of quantity and 
order ; so that the sum of all merely quantitative pro- 
cesses is a continual increase of more and more variety, 
and of a steadily more complex, more beautiful, wonder- 
ful, and general unity. Considered in its still farther 
coordinations with sentient existences, we may add also, 
that it steadily eventuates in ever increasing utility and 
beneficence by immeasurably widening and ennobling sen- 
tient experiences. All this is accomplished, moreover, 
through no increase of properties, for there is found to be 
neither more nor less of these possible under the present 



io8 The Constitution of Matter. 

constitution of things. Each atom, on the contrary, we 
have presumed to have its fixed amount and modes of 
property ; and its established, definite coordinations of 
processes with other atoms from the beginning of crea- 
tion. 




MIND. 




A GENERAL VIEW OF MIND AS DISTINGUISHED FROM 
MATTER, 

HERE has been in all ages a general, almost uni- 
versal belief that mind is something more than 
body ; something which may be distinguished 
from the body even when it is incarnated within it ; and 
which may continue to exist after the body has been laid 
aside. If this belief represents a truth, as I think it 
does, then it should be possible to study the constitu- 
tion of mind till we are able to comprehend the nature 
of mental properties, and to discriminate between these 
and the properties of matter. The difference must be 
real, definite ; and the properties fundamentally unlike in 
kind. 

The forces of matter are all unsentient, acting mechan- 
ically and with not the slightest trace of an approach 
towards sensation, emotion, intelligence, or volition. They 
produce merely mechanical processes, motion in space, 
the ceaseless drawing together of unwitting particles and 
spreading them abroad again, or pushing them to and fro 
in space in endlessly varying combinations. All this is 
accomplished by processes so simple, so complex, so per- 
fectly coordinated with everything else, that we stand in awe 
at the intricate, matchless scheme through which all has 
been achieved. We recognize the thousand phases of 
process, the more fascinating for their wide diversity, and 
we look on entranced in wonder at the magnitude and 
comprehensiveness of the results, tempted to cry out, 



no Mind. 

surely here is life ! here must be vivid conscious emotion 
in ever beautiful variation ! Not so. We look deeper : 
there is not a vestige of sentient experience. In every- 
thing there is as much utter unconsciousness as in the 
movement of a clod or a stone. Though highest wisdom 
must have been exercised in devising the scheme, and in- 
finite executive power was requisite to actualize it in sub- 
stance and property, yet throughout all matter there is 
no evidence of even the weakest attribute of life. All 
these cooperating modes of force are wholly unsentient. 

Whence, then, are these quick capabilities within our- 
selves, making us every hour the recipients of joys and 
sorrows ? These acute sensibilities, constituted for enjoy- 
ment and suffering, can these arise out of a pure mecha- 
nism? These clear conscious perceptions and discrimi- 
nations, can they be measured by quantity of force? 
These living powers which enable us to act or not to act 
in a thousand different directions, are they only modes of 
the dull unwitting pulses of action and reaction ? Each 
mind is held to be an extended atom coordinated in con- 
tinual action, reaction, and consequent perpetual inter- 
change of processes ; but in mind these processes when 
pertaining to itself are all sentient, felt, or experienced. 
Each mind is conscious of all its own characteristics, and 
within certain well-defined limits, is free to influence its 
own modes, and to determine the nature of the processes 
with which it will be associated, and to initiate new activ- 
ities. Mental properties are living properties, mental 
forces are all appetencies, and mental capacities are capa- 
bilities for so many modes of sentient experience. 

The properties and relations of simple matter can be 
measured, compared and discriminated as more and less, 
and even when they differ in kind can be expressed in the 
terms of a common quantity ; but pure mental properties 
and relations can be neither measured, weighed, num- 
bered, nor designated as more or less, nor expressed in 



Mind. 



in 



terms of any common quantity. They can only be com- 
pared as weaker or stronger, as narrower or more compre- 
hensive, as more or less distinct, or vivid, or acute, or 
clear-sighted, or noble or ignoble, or any other term ex- 
pressing intensiveness or quality of characteristics. As mind 
is also related to extension with its quantitativeness, we 
often apply to its proper mental processes terms of quantity 
which are wholly inappropriate \ as we also apply terms 
of quality to matter with similar inappropriateness. This 
is calculated to bewilder and mislead rather than to assist 
us in comprehending the true nature either of mental ex- 
periences or of material processes. 

There are few readily accepted, comparative terms per- 
taining to mental activities considered as intensive or 
qualitative. Science is literally almost undeveloped in 
this direction. Qualitative processes have usually been 
expressed quantitatively; and this has misled us into a 
multitude of false hypotheses. Under the stimulus of 
fancied analogies mental properties have received names 
corresponding to properties of matter. We often hear 
people talking in good faith about the literal growth and 
enlargement of mind ; and minds are actually conceived 
of by them as adding to their substance in quantity or 
amoimt, in a manner quite similar to the growth of bodies, 
though nothing could be more fallacious than this. Many 
other processes of body are most illogically held, by im- 
plication, to be processes also of mind. This is the great 
inlet to confusion ; conducing to the popular belief that 
mental science, of necessity, must always be misty and 
speculative. 

Mind, like matter, I maintain, has its own fixed and 
unvarying quantity of properties, coordinated with all 
other quantitative modes in the universe. Each mind 
has its own inherent amount of property, indivisible, and 
inseparable from its own proper substance ; but, in mind, 
both substance and property are alive or sentient. This 



1 1 2 Mind. 

life is not the product of lifelessness. Sentience is not 
one mode of unsentience, but the two are radically dis- 
similar and incompatible. Existence and non-existence 
can have no mean ; they can, in the nature of each, never 
be related through any third state or condition; but 
everything supposable must either exist or not exist ; and 
nothing can do both at the same time. Precisely so noth- 
ing can be, in essential nature, both sentient and unsen- 
tient, or both living and lifeless. Intelligence is not sim- 
ply another mode of absolute unsentience ; consciousness 
cannot arise as another phase of unconsciousness, and 
feeling is not merely a higher product generated from that 
which is utterly without feeling. Neither can volition 
arise from among the bond-servants chained in the eter- 
nal circle of reactions ; for all material action is, in fact, 
reaction, always dependent upon something which has 
gone before and produced it. No voluntary movement, 
therefore, could ever originate with matter; but all the 
most subtle molecular forces, so like live impulses as they 
seem, are as really dead and unwitting as all the others. 
Inanimate matter is one vast, lifeless, beautiful mechanism. 
Free, conscious, and voluntary movement, on the contrary, 
is an attribute of many minds; and sentience, or con- 
scious, felt experience, is an attribute of all minds. Mind 
and matter, therefore, must be radically and constitution- 
ally unlike. 

Organic matter is still simply matter and nothing more , 
but each organism is matter with all its modes and forces 
coordinated with some mind ; and for the time being, 
under its directive influence and control. The mind is 
not its organism, but through the kindred element of 
quantitativeness in each, they are mutually cooperative ; 
all their processes adjusted each to each in a harmonious 
unity. Dr. Carpenter says: "When, therefore, we com 
pare the constant activity which we encounter in living 
organized beings, with the passive condition of inorganic 



Mind. 1 1 3 

matter, we are compelled to conclude, that to whatever 
extent the forces which control the latter contribute to the 
actions going on in the former, there must be addi- 
tional forces resulting from the operation of properties, to 
which we know nothing analogous elsewhere." Does the 
physiologist discover so much, even in studying the mate- 
rial organism animated by its living mind ? What, then, 
may the psychologist hope to find in his researches ? 

Mind is alive, so that all its constitutional modes are 
coordinated living experiences. Through its extensive or 
quantitative nature, if acted upon by matter, organic or 
inorganic, it reacts again ; but the result in either event 
is felt, positive sensation in the sentient mind — a some- 
thing experienced in the living consciousness. The greater 
the amount of acting force, the larger is the amount of 
mental sensation ; but the kind or quality of this sensa- 
tion, and of living experience in general, is not condi- 
tioned upon amounts or upon anything external to the 
mind itself. All qualitative modifications arise from co- 
ordinations in the sentient constitution itself, so that no 
one can be conscious of sensations or any sentient experi- 
ences unless his own nature is sentient and coordinated 
with that quality of experience. All minds are sentient, 
but different minds are widely and essentially unlike, both 
in the quantity and quality of forces and capacities, as 
related to all sentient possibilities. Thus sensation is one 
mode of mental modification, perception another, and voli- 
tion still another. Each of these, again, has many differ- 
ing qualities, adapted to unlike conditions both subjective 
and objective. A stone has no sentient mode of property, 
and therefore no coordinated external senses through 
which it acts and is acted upon by foreign matter; it 
could experience no sensation though it should be eaten 
up by corroding substances, or beaten with force enough 
to grind it into powder ; but every mind, with its sentient 
properties, in this stage of being at least, is related to an 



H4 Mind. 

organism through which it communicates with extra- or- 
ganic substances, so that everything which it does, and 
everything which is done to it, eventuate in some quality 
of personal experience. The kind of experiences ger- 
main to it depends upon its own constitution, which is as 
definitely established in its special nature and in all its 
intensive coordinations, as matter is with its simple quan- 
titativeness. Mind is living or sentient being. It is pos- 
sible that even a vegetable may feel ; it is certain that an 
animal may both feel and perceive ; but it is evident that 
only a rational being can perceive, appreciate, and reason 
concerning the higher aesthetic and moral truths, and the 
abstract principles of things. Thus each mind has not 
only its own special quantitativeness of constitution, but 
its own special qualitativeness also ; each coordinated 
with everything else and mutually cooperative. 

The increase of qualitative experiences, moreover, is 
something positive and permanent. Emotion is not like 
motion simply the unvarying product of equals derived 
always from equals, and admitting no possible increase of 
amount, but the sum of emotion, of intensive experience 
universally, is continually increasing. Thus is there an 
endless accumulation of more and more positive suffering 
or enjoyment coordinated with all modes of sentient pro- 
cess, and pertaining always to the sentient being experi- 
encing them. If " a thing of beauty is a joy forever," so 
is every legitimate exercise of sentient property. I per- 
ceive a beautiful object, taste a pleasant flavor, run, think, 
choose, and act, all in accordance with the quantitative 
principles of equal action and counteraction which relate 
me to the objective world ; but the mental modes of sen- 
tient experience, also coordinated with these quantities, 
are mine alone. I gain these ; but I never return any of 
them again, at least to unsentient matter ; and if I com- 
municate the like to any other mind, I myself lose noth- 
ing thereby. What I have gained of any experience, I 



Mind. 



"5 



have gained absolutely. I give back as much quantitative 
force as I receive ; but the quality of the experience which 
waits upon the process is an ever new creation. It is not 
substantial existence, which, from its nature, can never 
be either more or less, of self-existing necessity ; but it is 
a new mode of sentient existence arising from new coor- 
dinations. Sentient modes are not amenable to quantity, 
nor measurable by it \ yet they never ignore or set aside 
quantitative principles, to which, also, they are coordi- 
nated ; but over which they reign supreme as the master 
has authority over the senseless tools he uses for his own 
ends. Mind, in its highest modes, can exercise control 
over even the intrinsic passiveness or enforced quantita- 
' tiveness of matter. It alone is intrinsically active or self- 
moving • and able, within fixed constitutional limits, to 
determine the nature of its own present modes and pro- 
cesses. It alone can act as rational cause, intelligently 
originating new events and coordinating adapted means to 
the furtherance of desired ends. 





WE MAY IMMEDIATEL Y PERCEIVE MINDS; 
THEIR SUBSTANCES, PROPERTIES, 
. AND PROCESSES. 

IND has no appreciable extensive properties ; as 
weight, size, form, or color. It may possess all 
these on a scale quite appreciable to a more 
finely organized class of beings than ourselves ; but our 
senses are not coordinated with quantities so exceedingly 
minute. It is, again, clearly impossible for us to repro- 
duce an image or representation of any mind, either in 
language or by a visible likeness ; since mind cannot be 
imaged by our coarse methods of representative art. But 
neither can any ultimate material atom present itself or be 
represented to us through sense. We perceive matter 
only in the aggregate, and every mind must be similarly 
studied, as related to its organism. 

We cannot paint the likeness of an axiom in mathe- 
matics, and yet after a simple statement or definition of it, 
such an axiom is as clear to us as light ; and as imme- 
diately perceived as any material object. Thus, iC a whole 
is greater than any of its parts," is an axiom which needs 
only to be stated to be perceived. Statement is definition, 
at least in mental science, and with all abstract principles. 
Art can represent body by imitating its modes of exten- 
sion ; but it can only define mind by indicating the nature 
of its characteristics with so much precision that the 
learner can find them for himself, as existing in the object. 
To comprehend the simplest definition, requires the direct 
active insight of a highly developed, rational mind. An 
ox can see the picture of a tree as certainly as he can see 



We may Immediately perceive Minds. 117 

the real tree ; but he has no comprehension of any possi- 
ble definition of a tree. If, then, we perceive mind with its 
intensive properties, it must be through rational intuition. 

Granting the existence of minds as living personalities, 
each possessing its own type of sentient properties, the 
question whether minds, like bodies, can be directly per- 
ceived by us, is first in order. Are we, under present con- 
ditions, and with our present development, as capable of 
directly perceiving and comprehending minds as bodies ? 
Why not ? Mental science is very much less advanced 
than material science — it meets with difficulties of a dif- 
ferent class ; yet perhaps not greater ones. The existence 
of sentient beings, as so many distinct, persisting per- 
sons, is ignored or denied by some theorists ; yet we are 
not to forget that there are also rationalists who deny any 
proper existence to matter. In our efforts to perceive 
mind, we are restricted to self-consciousness, or the per- 
ception of our own minds as we find ourselves existing in 
connection with our bodies, and to the perception of other 
minds also existing in an embodied state. Apparently, as 
ourselves incarnated, we are not able to perceive, at least 
by ordinary processes, minds disembodied — if there be 
any such. 

But can we immediately perceive minds existing in their 
material bodies ? Can we discriminate between the modes 
of force which mind and body mutually exert ; and directly 
perceive, in their joint processes, the cooperation of their 
several properties ? The dull body, though in itself opaque 
to our vision, may yet be illuminated by the spirit within ; 
the indwelling energy may render it transparent to the eye 
of a nature kindred with its own. I admit that we cannot, 
through the senses, perceive the ultimate atom, mind, as 
an extended isolated substance ; but, in the same sense in 
which we perceive the ultimate atoms of matter, as they 
exist coordinated in any given body, in this sense may we 
also perceive mind as an extended ultimate atom coordi- 



1 1 8 We may Immediately perceive Minds. 

nated with its organism. It is a rational perception 
attained through material coordinations. Mind is part 
and parcel of its organism, as much as any molecule of 
matter is a literal part of any compound into which it 
enters as an integer. The mental properties coact with 
the properties of its organism, as really, as efficiently, and 
as harmoniously, as the properties of any special material 
atom cooperate with those of other atoms with which it is 
compounded. The processes differ as widely as mind 
differs from matter ; but they are equally accessible to us, 
and alike adjusted to our perceptive faculties. 

Psychologists all admit that self-consciousness is an 
immediate perception. Who has ever held that he does 
not directly perceive his own thoughts \ but can he per- 
ceive the thoughts to be his own, and not perceive the act 
of thinking them ? How then would he know that they 
were his thoughts ? that he did think them ? His thoughts 
are a modification of himself, and if he perceives the mode, 
then he perceives himself in this mode. How can he per- 
ceive that they are his thoughts, and not also perceive him- 
self as thinking them. Undoubtedly the whole organism 
is concerned in the process of thought. There is quanti- 
tative action and reaction between the mind and its body ; 
and matter, coordinated with thought, allows its forces to 
be used, transformed, and ultimately rejected and cast out 
of the organism, as having already served its purpose : 
but throughout the entire process the mind is the only 
thinker. It alone has passed through modifications of 
sentient experience ; the whole organism beside, more 
or less actively cooperative as it has been in every part, 
has remained as unsentient and lifeless as the easy- chair 
in which the thinker sits. 

Thinking is a sentient change — a conscious act on the 
part of a conscious person. From the nature of the case, 
there can be no sentient change unless there is a sentient 
some-one changing. To affirm, therefore, that we perceive 



We may Immediately perceive Minds. 1 1 9 

the change, and yet that we do not perceive the some-one 
changing, is to demonstrate that we do not understand the 
meaning of our own assertion. I hold it proved to one 
who asserts that he perceives his own thoughts, that he 
also perceives himself in the act of thinking. He may 
not be intelligently conscious of this ; he may perceive 
himself confusedly, indefinitely. The newly restored blind 
man could see men only as trees walking. There is an ox- 
like state which looks out upon the material world, and 
can readily perceive extended, tangible, or measurable 
properties and modes of substance \ but sentient modifi- 
cations loom up before it like a dim, uncomprehended 
mistiness. The perception of one's own sentient being 
may be simply instinctive, unwitting — as it were, an irra- 
tional percept which has not fully cognized the nature of 
its own act The young child sees that a whole apple is 
worth more than a half of one ; when it stretches out its 
little hand for both pieces it asserts unmistakably its real 
perception that a whole is greater than one of its parts ; 
yet its little head would be utterly bewildered at an attempt 
to comprehend the abstract principle. As the child readily 
perceives the applied principle, so there is a similar con- 
crete, instinctive method by which we may perceive our 
real selves — by which, indeed, we must directly perceive 
ourselves, even while we are yet a great deal mystified by 
the complex nature of many of our modifications. 

If I am accustomed to take the measure of everything, 
as I would measure a rock or tree, then, if I find my mind 
unmeasurable, I may easily learn to confound it with my 
body for the sake of arriving at something tangible. Un- 
less I have some definite conception of the nature of the 
somewhat I am in search of, I may vaguely suppose that 
I perceive nothing but organic phenomena ; but if I can 
really perceive any sentient process, then I must perceive 
also the sentient element coordinated with that process. 
By making one's self the object of his own closest study, the 



1 20 We may Immediately perceive Minds. 

perceptions must ultimately become clear and well defined. 
It must be possible to clearly distinguish every coopera- 
ting mode of force in the mental process ; and to compre- 
hend much more than has ever been deemed feasible of 
the nature of the whole complex system of coordinations 
which contribute to every sentient experience. 

I assuredly perceive my own conscious self, participa- 
ting in every process which brings me another experience ; 
and I alone receive this experience. It is wholly mine, — 
a modification of my own living nature ; and nothing else, 
in the nature of things, can share in it. The testimony 
of my consciousness on this point is positive. I perceive 
the very substance of the me, as containing, as actualizing 
these living experiences. To perceive the sentient consti- 
tution of a mind, and yet not to perceive the mind thus 
constituted, would be as impossible as to perceive a physi- 
cal movement, and yet not to perceive the moving body. 
We can never perceive properties or their processes except 
as existing in and through their substances. 

I am often certain of obtaining an immediate insight 
into the minds of my neighbors. Are they not compo- 
nent parts of their own organisms — then why should I not 
be brought into direct relations with them ? Why can I not 
perceive their mental operations as really, though not as 
conveniently, and not always as distinctly or as accurately, 
as I can observe my own. Mental activity, manifesting 
itself through the energetic use of its own organism, is the 
normal condition of mind ; thus I am enabled to perceive 
in others all the details of a mental constitution kindred 
with my own, and coordinated with my powers of intui- 
tion. 

But men may use disguises which I cannot readily 
penetrate ; the body may be made a cloak to conceal the 
mind, which deliberately withdraws itself from me. It is 
in no sense voluntary with a mass of matter whether or 



We may Immediately perceive Minds. 121 

not I shall be able to perceive any of its characteristics. 
My perceptions must depend upon my own powers of 
intuition as coordinated with the material body ; but a 
mind, with voluntary powers like my own, may either help 
or hinder me in my efforts. Yet no one can altogether 
prevent my perceiving the involuntary and continuous 
facts of his mental constitution except by removing him- 
self altogether from my presence. There are facts rela- 
ting to his changing modes, — to his present volitions, 
intentions, and other activities, — which he is able, at least 
partially, to conceal from me, even when he is in my im- 
mediate presence. By judicious and persistent efforts he 
may do very much in that direction. 

Generally we have only a surface perception of bodies . 
yet when we look at a rock, a cloud, or a tree, with even 
the briefest and most casual glance, the percept obtained 
is real, though not at all adequate to a full cognizance 
of the object. In a similar way we may obtain real per- 
cepts of friends and acquaintances, more or less adequate, 
according to circumstances. There is much room for 
moral deceptions, for voluntary and deliberate misrepre- 
sentation on the part of another who designedly appears 
what he is not ; but there is much less room for intellectual 
fraud, or pretense and misrepresentation of personal abili- 
ties. Practically, in every-day life, we seldom doubt that 
we have a generally accurate knowledge of those about 
us — a knowledge obtained, too, directly from themselves 
and not at second hand. Probably we have never fully 
cognized anything in all its entireness — certainly not any 
mind ; yet we have had distinct glimpses of thousands of 
different minds. Based upon our perceptions of them, we 
form very definite conceptions of the characters of many of 
these persons. Our conceptions, however, are only infer- 
ences, often doubtless, erroneous to a great degree, while 
our immediate perceptions carry with them such a weight 
of evidence that we cannot doubt their reality. We could 



122 We may Immediately perceive Minds. 

often as easily doubt concerning ourselves and our own 
modes of being and doing, as concerning those of our 
neighbors. All this is not a matter of reason to be settled 
by argument, but it is a simple question of immediate 
intuition. 

Of course whoever contends that we cannot directly 
perceive matter, will be equally positive that we cannot 
directly perceive mind ; but if we can perceive the one, 
we certainly can also perceive the other. Our relations to 
extension and its various coordinations, enable us to appre- 
ciate like properties in matter ; but our higher sentient 
affinities relate us still more closely with all other sentient 
natures. The very essence of perception itself is sen- 
tience. I perceive another mind by the double aid of my 
own organism and of his through which he is made mani- 
fest ; but he is not represented by either organism — he 
presents himself to me, not as unsentient, like his body, 
but a sentient, personal mind, coordinated with an organ- 
ism which relates him to the external world. We cognize 
this mental nature, looking out intelligently through the 
eyes, covering the whole face with its own glowing emo- 
tions, animating the whole form with its own vivid life. 
The sound of a voice in another room will sometimes 
enable us to distinguish the most delicate grades of emo- 
tion ; we know gladness from sorrow when the mind 
looks out upon us in either mood ; we see the whole being 
aroused and in earnest, and again lethargic or discouraged ; 
we see it vindictive or forgiving, self-seeking or unselfish ; 
and we often penetrate even the hypocrisies, shams, and 
pretenses, deliberately assumed to deceive us. Thus the 
one sentient atom controls the whole unsentient organism, 
cooperating with its forces both instinctively and reflec- 
tively ; relating all its passive or reactionary processes to 
its own active or voluntary modes. Mind can do no less 
than this ! Without body, in this stage of existence at 
least, it is helpless ; for sentient modes are so coordinated 



i 



We may Immediately perceive Minds. 1 2 3 

with unsentient ones, that all qualitative experience is de- 
pendent upon quantitative cooperation. Why then should 
not the perceiving mind be also so coordinated with all 
these modes and processes, that its perceptions of them 
may be immediate ? 

The intuitions of most men give them a practical, un- 
classified knowledge of their fellows, upon which they act 
continually. They a read characters " shrewdly ; and when 
some test arises, are found to have taken the measure of 
those about them with marvelous accuracy. They will 
trust Deacon Honesty in all questions of morals ; but they 
never ask his opinion in a trade. The judgment of Esquire 
Sharper has great weight with them in politics ; but none 
at all in the management of the Sunday-school. The most 
uneducated mother knows that her bright little Johnny can 
learn the multiplication table, though he does dislike it ; 
and that half idiot Jamie is to be commended if he has 
mastered his A B C's at the same age. Illiterate day- 
laborers will look through their neighbors, as though they 
were so many open books, very legible on the whole, but 
subject to some perplexing contradictions, like most other 
books. How did they learn to read men at all ? Obviously 
by simply studying them, precisely as they would study the 
nature of a new complicated tool which was put into their 
hands for the first time. The handwriting of the Creator 
is so clearly and broadly given, one part relating and illus- 
trating all the others at every turn, that a great deal of it 
is often acquired almost unwittingly. It is the close con- 
nection and the endless repetition, with slight variations, 
which makes everything so intelligible, interpreted in the 
light of everything else. 

When philosophers call in the aid of direct intuition in 
the study of other minds, both of their own class and of 
other types of sentient being, as they have long done in 
studying the personal me, many dark points will be illu- 
mined. It will hardly do here to rely either upon tradi- 



124 W& ma y Immediately perceive Minds. 

tions and ancient theories, biased by long ago out-worn 
prejudices, or to construct all minds upon the principles 
of logical harmony, conceived in the light of one's own 
preconceptions and predilections. There may be many 
widely differing classes of mind, as there have been found 
to be distinct classes of elementary matter. If mind is 
sentient being, then it would seem that everything living 
should be accompanied with sentience, which is living 
experience. Every living atom, therefore, would be a mind. 
This is a question which can only be determined by the 
direct and most careful study of many classes of living 
beings ; and by a wide comparison of many of their char- 
acteristics. If every mind is not an ultimate atom consti- 
tuted by sentient properties, coordinated with other prop- 
erties both sentient and unsentient, then what is it ? The 
only answer must be found in mind itself! 

It is said that the reflective powers are the latest in 
development, and that self-knowledge is the most rare and 
difficult of all attainments. This may be true. I am con- 
vinced that much which was supposed to be derived from 
self-consciousness has been really acquired from other 
minds. Foreign psychological theories, when brought into 
our own mental laboratories for analysis, may become con- 
fused with our own mental processes till we believe we 
are studying the science of mind through self-perception, 
while we are quite as largely indebted to objective per- 
ception. What psychologist is not vastly more indebted 
to the theories of others for his mental science than to the 
direct cognition of his own mind ? And who does not 
apply his philosophy quite as much to his neighbors as to 
himself, whether he is dealing with purely intellectual or 
with moral science ? 




COORDINATIONS OF MIND AND BODY. 

SHE constitution of the human mind and its rela- 
tions to the body, involve interests of such vital 
practical moment that they cannot be safely 
overlooked. No mind can attain to the free use of all its 
powers through a defective body ; and again, a defective 
body is often the direct result of a badly developed mind. 
The coordinated constitutions of a mind and its organism 
act upon each other so reciprocally that neither can attain 
to a perfectly harmonious development without a corre- 
sponding development of the other. There is a certain 
balance of forces, which, once inaugurated, tends to con- 
tinue itself; coordinating all the new matter introduced 
into the system with its own status, and thus continuing 
peculiarities of an organism, not only for a lifetime, but 
carrying them on even into new organisms springing from 
the old ; fashioning the descendant in the unmistakable 
likeness of his ancestor. This is as true of mental as 
of material coordinations, so that any peculiar mode or 
tendency of mental processes, such as the undue devel- 
opment or suppression of any group of sentient powers, 
usually continues itself, if not disturbed by foreign influ- 
ences. On this point it will be necessary to dwell at 
length in another connection. 

Mind and its organism are each mutually dependent on 
the other. A broken head may completely paralyze the 
rational activity of the mind \ and a mind which grovels 
in the abuse of its intellectual and moral powers, can 
degrade its body even to the level of the brute ; a body 
habitually pinched by want and starvation, leaves the 



126 Coordinations of Mind and Body. 

mind fitful, inefficient, or imbecile in activities ; while 
repressed and disused mental powers produce a gross and 
animal type of organism. The body can work stultifica- 
tion to the mind through intemperate sensual indulgence, 
and the mind can sharpen the body into unwholesome 
acuteness by immoderate intellectual activity. There is a 
type of fine animal development, resulting from excellent 
physical conditions and steady muscular training, which 
does not necessarily deteriorate the modes of mental 
activity, but tends rather to quicken and stimulate these 
also ; as there is a judicious mental culture, which though 
perhaps excessive, and giving undue preponderance to 
merely rational activities, yet does not degrade but tends 
rather to elevate the body, and to refine all its operations. 
A truly harmonious development balances each against 
the other ; seeking to build up the one strictly through its 
coordinations with the other. Of course the more we 
understand of their mutual legitimate influence, the wiser 
educators shall we become, both for ourselves and our 
children. 

This mutual influence is found to extend to even the 
minutest details. Habitual mental habits are so exter- 
nally patent to the eye, that he who runs may read. One 
can quite accurately point out the various nationalities in 
any crowd of men gathered on our streets. With nearly 
the same accuracy, he could group them according to 
their respective business pursuits. There is no need of 
the class-dress of the old world to aid physiognomic per- 
ceptions ; for the mind is found to clothe itself in entire 
disregard of the fashions of the day. I have seen an 
imposing procession of well-dressed men in black broad- 
cloth, with " Fenian " written more legibly on their faces 
than on their banners. In this country, where mistresses 
and maids are not always distinguishable either by the 
style or the materials of their garments, the expression and 
texture of the face is the best indication of social rank. 



i 



Coordinations of Mind and Body. 127 

Even when this fails, " their speech bewrayeth them." Nor 
is it merely the words ; for we have but little provincialism 
of phrase or brogue among even the less educated of our 
own people ; while slang and doubtful grammar are largely 
accepted with us even among the cultivated ; but the 
unconscious tones of the voice are almost infinitely expres- 
sive of the degrees of general refinement. A dozen freely 
uttered indifferent sentences, in nine cases out of ten, 
would enable a close observer, whose attention had been 
called in this direction, to decide correctly as to about the 
mental and conventional status of the female speaker. 

With men, the wider range of pursuits incident to a dem- 
ocratic business world, where almost everybody does a 
little of everything, develops in the male voice a compli- 
cation of tones, to correspond with the widened and inten- 
sified male character, which is sometimes greatly perplex- 
ing. It only goes to show that perhaps a majority of our 
medium public and general business men are developed 
very much in stripes ; abounding both in mental and 
material incongruities, which arise legitimately from the 
somewhat heterogeneous character of their avocations 
and general conditions. All this still more strikingly 
verifies the truth, that each mind is the legitimate artist 
of its own body. It moulds it unconsciously, uninten- 
tionally, by the simple exercise of its own normal activi- 
ties. It may still more powerfully affect it designedly, 
by a continued judicious care over it, as a rational and 
responsible protector. 

Disease and deformity originate both from physical 
and mental causes ; so that a bodily hurt or a mental ail- 
ment are either sufficient to produce a like result. Idiocy 
may spring simply from arrested development of the body 
before or after birth • from a hurt to some physical func- 
tion of the brain ; or it may have its source in inordinate 
mental excitement, as sudden grief or fear. Anything 
which disturbs the adjustment of the organism to the 



128 Coordinations of Mind and Body. 

mental needs, and places it outside of mental control, 
must produce the effect of a mental incapacity or aberra- 
tion. Thus if you can reach the imbecile's mind, it is 
found that you can most powerfully affect his body through 
this mental influence ; and if the organism be not too 
feeble to bear the strain, it will strengthen and thrive 
thereby. It has been practically demonstrated that most 
idiocy is only negative, and like all other undevelopment, 
can be overcome by persistent efforts in the right direc- 
tion. Where the mind has been hindered from action 
through some malformation or rudimentary state of the 
correlative organs, mental stimulants are found more 
efficient in overcoming the impediment than any amount 
of mere physical training can be ; therefore the first care 
always is to arouse the mind to thought and comprehen- 
sion, by any expedient which can be devised without too 
great a shock to the patient ; but it is also true, that if 
you can strengthen and develop the body, through its di- 
rect influence upon the mind you may go far towards 
effecting a cure and benefiting the rudimental capa- 
bilities. On the other hand, if the first cause of the 
imbecility arose from some mental crisis, the mind should 
rest, at least for a time, and the body be made vigorous ; 
and gradually the lost chain of relations between them 
may be found again, when the mind will resume its 
wonted intelligent action. 

All forms of mental aberration, also, arise from some 
disturbance of the coordinated processes of the mind and 
its organism. The poor body, if persistently robbed of 
sleep, or worked with unresting excitement, or continu- 
ously goaded by a tortured mind, may well become at last 
so unnerved and discordant in all its various modes of 
action, that the mind will lose control over it ; and thus 
lose, for the time at least, the control even of its own 
rational consciousness, and become insane. If when the 
mind thinks or feels, there is a rigid quantitative action 



Coordinations of Mind and Body. 129 

and reaction between itself and adapted portions of its 
organism, then all voluntary control over its own moods 
of thought and feeling must depend upon modes of coor- 
dination with quantitative force. Doubtless these may 
exist outside of its present organism, but so long as it is 
incarnated, it is cooperative with its organism ; and thus 
even its highest qualitative moods are dependent upon its 
quantitative relations. Keeping this fact in view, we can 
better comprehend how one mind may be wholly unbal- 
anced, while another, sane on most topics, or under most 
circumstances, is yet entirely insane in special directions. 

With our present knowledge, it is not easy to decide 
exactly where the disturbance arises. It is said, on the 
evidence of post-mortem examinations, that the brains of 
persons with whom insanity has been of long standing, do 
not always evidence a greatly diseased or a very abnor- 
mal state ; therefore the difficulty has been supposed to 
arise, not in the brain simply, — the brain being conceded 
to be the immediate organ of the mind, — but to originate 
quite as much with the more removed nutritive processes 
of the system, which fail to supply the right aliment in the 
right conditions for healthy mental action. However this 
may be, there is evidently some form of disturbance in 
the cooperative functions of mind and body. 

But the abnormal phenomena attending insanity are 
not more strange or inexplicable than the normal phe- 
nomena connected with sleep \ and the one can no more 
be made to militate against the immortality of mind than 
the other. In sleep, some mental processes are inactive, 
while others are sometimes unusually quickened. I be- 
lieve it will be found, as a general rule, that all modes 
involving discrimination, judgment, and moral volition, 
all modes in which mind is the self-determining and direc- 
tive power, are partially or wholly inoperative ; while all 
those modes which are excited from without, either through 
the senses or by recollections of something which has 
9 



i 3 o Coordinations of Mind and Body. 

gone before, may sometimes be even unusually stimulated. 
Ihus if we'aredisturbed by a noise, we often dreau of 
sounds and the various objects suggested by them or it 
n sleepmg we feel any form of physical discomfort we 
nerhaps exaggerate it into other and greater discomforts. 
CScerScurrences and those lately recalle to he 
mind frequently dwell in the consciousness during sleep 
wkh a thousandfantastic addition, Of course the mind 
governed as it is by quantitative laws, must be ahvay m 
Cooperation with its unresting, ever-changing orgamsm 
and'as it is acted upon from without, the cor^spondmg 
sentient modes are excited. The organism with us outer 
coordinations is in the ascendant, while in the vigilan 
waking moments, the mind is sovereign. Then it controls 
its organism and does very much towards choosing and 
directing its own modes of present experience j but in 
s£ep itfays down the rudder and is drifted at the mercy 
of circumstances. 

Sleep is mental rather than physical. Mind needs rest 
from its incessant activity with the accompanying vivid 
experiences; and more especially, when its rational and 
voluntary powers are in exercise, it is kept continually on 
the alert. But in natural slumber these are largely at 
rest An equilibrium is established between this class 
of mental and their material modes, and active processes 
are for a time suspended. The exhausted brain has time 
to recuperate its spent energies from its adapted aliment , 
and when the mind is roused again to the use of its ow ^ 
legitimate functions, the renewed brain is again in vigoi 
ous working order, all its waste repaired from withou £ 
It is mind alone which sleeps; as it is mind only whic 
is ever awake. Unsentient matter has no part either 
the consciousness of mind awake, or in the unconscious 
Lss of mind in its deepest slumber. Body therefo^ i 
never at rest. All its general processes of respirat . ^ 
digestion, circulation, etc., are in continual exercise, < 



Coordinations of Mind and Body. 131 

though we speak of the senses as locked in slumber, yet, 
except in the case of sight alone, we have seen that this 
is only partially true ; and therefore, those modes of mind 
which are especially coordinated with sense, are still often 
responsive to the outer world with which the senses them- 
selves are more closely related. In perfect health, that is, 
when all the various complex processes of mind and body 
are working in exact harmony, sleep is almost if not wholly 
dreamless, and the mind rests in total unconsciousness. 

The sentient modes of mind are not directly coordi- 
nated with the general recuperative processes of the 
system. All these go on as wholly outside of our expe- 
riences as are the processes of fermentation which raise 
the bread we are to eat in the future. When circulation 
or digestion are impeded, we suffer pain, but if they act 
harmoniously, if the organs go on assimilating the pre- 
pared nutriment, as they do, sleeping and waking, then our 
sensations teach us nothing about these outside processes. 
We wake with a sense of immense refreshment, the various 
organs of the mind have all been renewed while we rested, 
the waste matter has been cast out from them into appro- 
priate places, preparatory to a final exit from the system, 
or is already floating as noxious gases in the atmosphere ; 
and with the new day there is born an ever new sense of 
vigor. Mind is found to be directly coordinated with its 
organism alone, and not with the outside processes of 
repair by which the organs are continually renewed ; yet 
if there is any disturbance in the latter, waking or sleep- 
ing everything is wrong, and attended with more or less of 
discomfort. Sleep is haunted by dreams and nightmares, 
and the waking comes, but without a sense of refreshment. 
Thus all the processes of nature are more or less remotely 
allied, and all things living are prone to slumber in the 
general peace and quietude of darkness and night. 

In mental aberrations something akin to the condition 
of natural slumber is often manifested. The mind is not 



132 Coordinations of Mind and Body. 

now at rest as in sleep. On the contrary, it is generally 
most excitedly awake ; but, as in slumber the rational and 
responsible modes of mind have lost control over their 
adapted organs, through a balanced state of equilibrium, 
which for the time checks all action; so insanity is a loss 
for the time of the same control, through some break in 
the chain of coordinations. The rational powers have lost, 
for the present the conditions necessary to their proper 
activity ; while those modes of mind which are excited 
through the outer senses, as allied to foreign influences, 
may be unusually excited. All the more reasonable, 
sedate, and self-directive modes of force, have been con- 
verted into these. Hence the exuberance of fancy, and the 
boundless influence of imagination, in almost all cases of 
insanity. The special forms of the disorder must of course 
be as various as the complicated nature of the disturbance. 
Reason once dethroned, no vagary is then too wild to be 
conceived of or even acted on, in the utmost good faith. 

The loss of sleep is an almost universal feature of the 
disease. A thorough rest of the mind would allow the 
organs time to recuperate, and when this can be effectu- 
ally secured, sanity is again established and the mind 
resumes its wonted processes ; but while sleeplessness 
continues, those mental moods already in the ascendant 
are able to maintain the monopoly, and to occasion cor- 
responding disorder in the whole organism ; so that the 
evil, like all others, tends directly to perpetuate itself. 
Happily the principles of order are too firmly established 
everywhere to be permanently overthrown ; and nature is 
always doing her utmost to effect a cure. 

Insanity may also be produced by any physical injury 
to the brain sufficient to unsettle the direct cooperative 
processes between it and the mind, or by so great a dis- 
turbance of the general organism as will effect the same 
object. Hence some delirium is not uncommon in many 
constitutions, with even slight ailments ; and possibly, with 



Coordinations of Mind and Body. 133 

our present habits, very few of us continue to be perfectly 
well balanced. No physician can hope to succeed, in this 
involved nineteenth century, who does not understand 
more about the nature of the mind than of the body; 
since it is there that we are to look for both the causes 
and the cures of the larger half of all diseases. 

All this is in direct evidence that there is an established 
system of normal adjustments between the mind and its 
body, and that upon the faithful maintenance of these, must 
depend not only the well-being of the mental nature, but 
also the health and refinement of the physical, and its 
adaptability to the uses of life. 

But if mind and body are so intimately connected in all 
common interests, how do we know that they are not 
essentially the same ? We perceive their different and 
unlike natures. We have each a personal consciousness 
of an identity which has remained unchanged from child- 
hood. The same me who felt pleasure and pain long ago, 
is enjoying and suffering still, and all its experiences per- 
tain to myself alone. My body does not enter into this 
personal consciousness. Its processes are not a part of 
my sentient life. It digests food and builds up its own 
organism in a way quite unknown to me. If I would 
observe its general operations, I must borrow the senses 
of the body and look through them to study the nature of 
body itself. Looking away from the conscious life of my 
proper self, I must study the body as something evidently 
foreign to me. 

A soldier loses his leg or arm, but his mind is not 
diminished. He may lose both legs and both arms, and 
yet he will retain his personal identity entire. The child's 
body grows in stature and weight, yet his mind, though 
much more developed than in infancy, is the same mind 
still, having added nothing to its essential identity. 

The body is changing all the time : it has less proper 
individuality than a mountain or a stone, since the moun- 



1 34 Coordinations of Mind and Body. 

tain and stone will remain for many years almost un- 
changed, either in substance or properties; while the 
organism is literally changing incessantly, and so rapidly, 
it has been computed that once in about seven years it 
exchanges its entire substance with all its forces. I myself 
am clothed upon by this ceaselessly changing organism ; 
and yet I am able to so far extend to it my own character 
of personal unity, that it seems to us more individual than 
the rock or stone which remain to all intents the same for 
centuries together. This simplicity of nature is unmis- 
takably in me — not in my body, which is so eminently 
complex and divisible. 

The body is my indispensable medium of communica- 
tion with other material substances, and my most efficient 
aid in the perception of other minds. Through its coop- 
eration I acquire new experiences, and by its assistance I 
express these experiences to others ; and yet it is mechani- 
cally subservient, always acting with me or reacting against 
me, through established quantitative modes. Thus I lay 
my hand on the table and it resists the pressure I make 
upon it with an exactly equal force. I feel the objective 
resistance — feel its influence both on my organism and 
through this on my living self. The sentient experience is 
certainly wholly in myself ; but something communicated 
by the table and conveyed along the nerves of my body, 
awakens this experience in my cooperative mind. 

A light ball is tossed into my hand : it communicates to 
me, through my organism, a peculiar slight sensation, and 
when my mind reacts against this with a force just equal 
to that which acted upon it, there arises in me, in connec- 
tion with this act, the qualitative experience of perception, 
terminating in the object perceived. A heavy ball is tossed 
to me : it excites a similar sensation and perception ; but 
the sensation is intensified in proportion to the weight and 
velocity of the bail. Here, then, is quantitative action 
influencing the quality or intension of my mental expe- 



Coordinations of Mind and Body. 135 

rience. If I bring sugar into contact with my tongue, it 
produces a specific quality of sensation — the taste of 
sweetness. I take honey instead of sugar, and the result 
is a modified sensation of sweetness. Each sensation is 
wholly mental ; yet something as wholly objective in the 
sugar and honey contributes to produce the sensation, and 
the difference in the mental modification is coordinated 
with their different properties. If I take a larger quantity 
of the sweet article into my mouth, the increase of sensa- 
tion shows a direct relation between quantity in the object 
and the quality of the experience in myself. 

Quality, if used as meaning something pertaining to 
kind or intension of experience, cannot pertain to matter : 
but, it appears, that quantity or amount, measurable as 
more or less, does pertain to mind. The quantity of all 
cooperative modes of force directly influence the amount 
of the mental experience, not only throughout the whole 
range of sensations, but throughout the whole class of 
sentient experiences. The organism, as wholly material, 
must evidently obey all the laws of matter ; and, obviously 
a harmonious adjustment co-relates myself — my body, 
and every foreign body, allying us all quantitatively — pre- 
cisely as where material forces alone are involved. 

Not only are my experiences greater or less, according 
to the amount of cooperative agencies acting upon me, 
but I can also vary the quantity of effect which I am able 
to produce at will on foreign bodies. I toss a ball lightly, 
with so little force that it barely leaves my hand. I am 
distinctly conscious that it is I who will to toss this ball ; 
and yet I bring into exercise and hold under my control 
the material forces of my organism as essential instru- 
ments by which alone I can complete this act. The ball 
touches the opposite wall and returns feebly back towards 
me, its angle of reflection equal to the angle of incidence, 
showing that feeble as was the effort made by me it was 
subject to the quantitative law of all material movement. 



1 36 Coordinations of Mind and Body. 

Now let me send off this ball with my utmost force : it 
speeds like an arrow across the room, it beats heavily 
against the resisting wall, and flies sharply back into my 
face. Here, surely, are quantitative relations coordina- 
ting mind and matter. All my volitions, and everything 
material under their control, are most rigidly related in 
quantity. I perceive the same truth illustrated by every 
one about me. An earnest man with a purpose is one who 
accomplishes what he attempts ; while a fashionable lady, 
educated to aimlessness, must remain as guiltless of rea 
achievement as her own little children. The most trivia 
details of life perpetually exemplify this law of inexorable 
quantitativeness. My friend, speaking quietly in the easy 
rest of his emotions, renders every tone of his voice calm 
and rest giving. We converse on topics in which he feels 
little interest, and his indifference comes pulsing back to 
me so palpably that I hurry on to a new theme — this per- 
haps moves him to the quick — a burning intenseness of 
feeling surcharges his lowest suppressed utterances, and I 
am moved too, as effectually as if he had dealt me a heavy 
blow. The effect is as different as the means used ; but 
not the less subject to quantitative restrictions. When I 
see a man in anger, beating the table or shaking his 
clenched fist in the air, I know that there is streaming on 
through his organism wave after wave of force, as fully 
governed by the laws of matter as are the heat and light 
radiating from the grate of glowing coals. 

The mind may be presumed to unite its organism to 
itself exactly as throughout the universe one atom is joined 
to others, through the cooperation of their mutual proper- 
ties — the only difference being that mind is conscious, and 
sometimes voluntary, in the use or disuse of some of its 
coordinated processes, and may in part choose its own 
modes and cooperative instruments, while each unsentient 
atom can move only as it is moved. 

The body is not a clog or a burden ; but an ally relating 



Coordinations of Mind and Body. 137 

its mind to all the outlying resources of the universe. 
Without it, in this stage of existence at least, mind would 
be a waif in creation ; possessing possibly all its present 
sentience, but standing in unrelated isolation, apart from 
even all other sentient beings. We may safely infer that 
Creative Wisdom has made no mistakes in his adaptation 
of minds and bodies ; and that the highest good of the 
living being has been thereby secured ! 

Herbert Spencer has carefully discussed various mate- 
rial definitions of life, reducing them to a more compre- 
hensive definition of his own. Life, as he views it, is " the 
continuous adjustment of internal relations (organic rela- 
tions) to external relations (relations of the environment)." 
I should say, " Life " — that is the sensitive needs of the 
living mind — " causes the continuous adjustment of inter- 
nal relations to external relations." Thus the organism is 
built up and maintained by ever repeated processes with 
ever changing materials — by a ceaseless " twofold mate- 
rial movement of composition and decomposition at once 
general and continuous." But indwelling in this shifting 
mechanism, there is a persisting mind, forever relating all 
these changes to its own sentient experiences. 




THE CONSTITUTION OF MIND. 

IE have seen that the very substance of matter is 
measurable in weight and in volume ; that its 
processes are all measurable in time and in space ; 
that all its remotest relations are quantitative ; and that 
its conditions and possibilities, of all kinds whatsoever, 
are measurable in common terms of quantity. Matter 
can be neither pleased nor pained by any operations which 
can be performed upon it ; its functions and processes are 
utterly lifeless. Its only social affection is quantitative- 
ness — so much for so much. 

It is now my purpose to point out in detail that all the 
attributes of mind, though related like matter in quantity, 
are also related in quality or kinds of sentient experiences ; 
which are incomparably above all unsentient modifications 
in rank and worth. Matter is dead, mind is alive. Every 
mind is a distinct sentient being ; so that all its activities 
ultimate in pleasure or pain within its own living expe- 
rience. None of its modes are simply extensive, and to 
be measured only as greater or less spacially ; but they 
are preeminently intensive, — are varied in kind or vivid- 
ness of experience, or in the scope and comprehensiveness 
of its different experiences. Its characteristics cannot be 
adequately measured by amounts, but by values ; as pleas- 
urable or painful, worthy or unworthy, noble or ignoble. 

An unsentient constitution is intrinsically an impersonal 
constitution. Each material atom may be individual and 
indivisible ; but it has no basis for personality. A mass of 
matter can even have no proper individuality. One body 
merges in another, often with the most ludicrous avidity. 



The Constitution of Mind. 1 39 

The granite boulder dissolves itself into earth, earth organ- 
izes itself into tree, tree fructifies itself into apple, apple 
aspires itself into flesh ; then all flesh becomes grass ; and 
the round of incessant change begins anew. A sentient 
constitution, on the contrary, necessitates a personality — 
necessitates a true and proper unit — the indivisible sub- 
ject of all sentient properties. To enjoy or suffer, implies 
that the somewhat enjoying or suffering be alive ; and the 
simplicity of its living nature is the vital pivot of its sen- 
tient characteristics. Two minds cannot combine to pro- 
duce one and the same sentient act. If both should have 
identical thoughts or sensations at the same time, there 
would still be two distinct trains of experience ; for every 
sentient act must be felt and appreciated by one actor as 
its own. When two minds perceive the same thing at the 
same time, there are still two distinct acts of perception. 
There may be myriads of minds, myriads of beings each 
endowed with a living constitution ; but each must be in 
itself an indivisible person. Living force, because it does 
live, is inseparable from the personal mind constituted by 
it. Living capacity is the capacity of a live being. There 
can be no transfer of life as there can be no transfer of 
living experience. There is no quantitative basis on which 
to effect an exchange of qualities ; since all quality must 
pertain wholly to the mind experiencing it ; therefore 
quality of experience is not amenable to the law of quanti- 
ties. 

Even if mind could be regarded as only a temporary 
mode of matter, — as a form of consciousness arising from 
the organism and wholly dependent upon it, so that when 
the organism is destroyed the life or consciousness will 
also cease to exist, — yet even then, for the time being, all 
sentient experience must pertain to the undivided whole 
of the organism which has developed it. It would still 
be impossible that any two organisms could exercise iden- 
tical functions. If both were perceiving the same thing 



140 The Constitution of Mind. 

at the same time, there would be two acts of perception 
and two distinct series of organic coordinations. Thus 
indispensable is it, in the nature of things, that present 
unity should be coupled with present sentient experience. 
Wherever there is positive sentience of any degree, from 
the lowest to the highest, whether this sentience results 
merely from a temporary coordination of matter or is a 
permanent property of a living atom, in either case, from 
internal necessity, it is related to an experiencing some- 
what, which, for the time being, is a unit ; and as such is 
equally sentient in all its parts. The present organism, if 
itself alive, experiences and acts in the present. Five or 
ten minutes hence the changing organism would have 
taken on a new sentience, and there could be no abiding 
self-consciousness. But the human organism is not equally 
sentient in all its parts ; and personal identity is an abiding 
fact ; therefore it cannot be the changing, differentiated 
organism which is sentient, but the unchanging, homoge- 
neous unit coordinated with its organism. If logic can 
prove anything, granting the premises, we must grant also 
the conclusion. 

We might suppose, again, that any atom of matter ele- 
vated to the central and controlling position in an organ- 
ism, would become sentient, and remain thus in unchanged 
identity so long as it maintained its ruling position, sus- 
tained by all the needful organic adjustments ; but losing 
these, the organism would be destroyed, and the deposed 
atom fall back again into unsentience. Consciousness 
here would involve a present conscious person, which is 
the point upon which we are just now occupied. 

But can it be that life or sentience is simply one mode 
of otherwise unsentient matter ? — a mode so coordinated 
with organization that any atom falling into the authorita- 
tive position in an organism, would become sentient and 
continue thus so long, but only so long, as it could main- 
tain its central post ? We have already seen that there is 



The Constitution of Mind. 141 

no mean between sentience and unsentience — that while 
everything must be either one or the other, yet nothing 
can be both at the same time. There are many modes of 
sentience, from the lowest feeling, pleasurable or painful, 
to the highest thought and volition, with their attendant 
emotions ; can all these modes, many of them simul- 
taneous, and, as a whole, persisting through a period of 
many years, together constitute only one mode of unsen- 
tience ? The burden of proof lies with those who advo- 
cate this theory. It is not supported by a fragment of 
real evidence, while everything pertaining to the real con- 
stitution of things militates against it. Self-originated 
modes of living experience are so totally unlike the prin- 
ciple of endless reactions, emotion is so superior to motion, 
it is incredible that the one should arise from mere adapta- 
tions of the other. A new and higher element has surely 
entered into the constitution of living substance ! All its 
modes are eager, personal impulses — appetencies and 
capabilities related always to qualities of pleasure and 
pain; which become perpetual incentives to its various 
modes of self-determined activity, as well as to all its 
instinctive operations. The quality of the sentience, in all 
its possible modes and capacities, constitutes the real and 
very nature of its mind, being indivisible in it, and insep- 
arable from it. Thus each mind, because it is mind or 
sentient existence, must have simplicity of constitution and 
unity of experiences. Here is an entirely unlike, but not 
less real or self-evident series of coordinations pertaining 
to mind, in addition to those by which matter is consti- 
tuted. 

There are, apparently, two poles of sentience in every 
quality of experience which pertains to consciousness — 
not now a maximum and minimum of more and less ; but 
two extremes or degrees of intensity related in kind. The 
current states of the sensibility are always somewhere 
between these two extremes ; for one is usually neither 



142 The Constitution of Mind. 

suffering nor enjoying to his utmost, nor doing anything 
else with the whole might of his being ; and there is also 
a negative extreme of apathy and inertness to which we 
seldom attain. Different minds differ in this respect. 
Some are habitually much nearer the negative pole than 
others ; and a few are extremely erratic in their moods — 
examples of moral pendulums, always vibrating between 
the cavernous depths of depression and the mountain 
heights of enthusiasm. The mass of men are generally 
equable in their various moods, indulging in great ex- 
tremes of any kind only on great occasions \ but the most 
placid temper may become immensely exasperated ; the 
most feeble will, may become grandly heroic on occasion, 
and the veriest sluggard may arouse himself to desperate 
deeds once or twice in a lifetime. The degree of in- 
tensity or force in qualitative experience of any kind, is 
influenced by the general state of the sensibility at the 
time ; as all sentient modes are quantitatively correlated, 
so that an excess of one conduces towards a low state of 
every other. Sentient modes are also coordinated in 
quantity to external conditions of many kinds, so that 
more or less of force acting upon the mind or cooperating 
with it through any modes of process whatever, greatly 
influence all its degrees of intension. A heavy blow is 
more painful than a light one, and it requires much more 
conscious exertion to lift a hundred pounds than a single 
ounce ; but the kind of sentience or consciousness is in no- 
wise dependent on the amount of force or on anything 
pertaining to quantity. It is the degree of that particular 
kind or mode of experience which is directly affected by 
quantity of cooperating force. Thus an ox, like a man, 
can suffer more or less in the intensity of the pain which 
accompanies a more or less heavy blow ; but the man, 
unlike the ox, may be excited thereby to think and reason 
on the subject ; and thus be stimulated by the blow to the 
exercise of the higher but coordinated intellectual and 



The Constitution of Mind. 143 

moral modes, which also pertain to his higher and broader 
nature. 

The qualities of sentient experience may be almost in- 
finitely varied ; and not merely in degree, but still more 
widely in kind — in radical and distinct differences of 
grade, between which there is coordination, but not neces- 
sarily correlation or the possibility of inter changeableness. 
Degrees of sentient modes are quantitatively interchange- 
able in the same mind \ and also between one mind and 
another, and all the modes or kinds of property pertain- 
ing to any one mind are interchangeable or mutually con- 
vertible among themselves and with other minds kindred 
with their own \ but there are kinds of quality pertaining 
to unlike classes of minds, which are no more convertible 
with each other than the special modes of property per- 
taining to oxygen or hydrogen are convertible with each 
other or with those of carbon. They are all cooperative 
and mutually coordinated with the general scheme of 
things ; but as modes of property, they pertain to their 
own substances alone. Thus the simple content of satis- 
fied vegetable existence is not correlated with the sublime 
joy accompanying a disinterested moral act ; and the one 
is never interchangeable with the other, although they may 
cooperate in common processes, and both possess one 
common feature, namely, that they are real and positive 
personal experiences, of the vegetable and the man sev- 
erally. 

If we admit that mind is substance constituted by liv- 
ing or sentient properties, which are at once both exten- 
sive and intensive \ or quantitative and qualitative in nature 
and in all their coordinations ; while matter is substance 
constituted simply by extensive or quantitative properties ; 
then everything which manifests life, manifests sentience, 
and must be either itself living, like the sentient mind, or like 
the unsentient body acting under the direct control of liv- 
ing power. There must be life or mind, then, in every 



144 The Constitution of Mind. 

vegetable or animal organism; and even vegetable pro- 
cesses must be coordinated with sentient personal expe- 
rience. 

It is comparatively easy for us to comprehend the minds 
of men, to interpret their thoughts and emotions, and to 
closely study the type of mind to which they belong. They 
are not only essentially like ourselves, in general attributes, 
but are somewhere in the same plane of development, ex- 
periencing like pleasures and pains, and influenced by like 
motives. To discern the exact nature of the ox, — to be 
able to appreciate and define the sentient type to which 
he belongs, — is much more difficult. We cannot enter 
into his experiences ; we must observe him merely as out- 
side spectators, judging him by the modes of sentience 
manifested to us. Is he a rudimental intelligence, capa- 
ble under the right conditions of yet attaining to an 
active self-consciousness and to moral volitions ? or are his 
capacities forever limited to sensations and to concrete 
perceptions ? Who shall fathom the darkness of his in- 
stinctive activities — his patient weary waiting in a twilight 
of semi-self-consciousness, to us inconceivable, and as 
turbid as the outer darkness. 

More remote still must be the experience of a vegetable 
life. We can trace in it but dimly, evidences of even the 
lowest attributes of a sentient, personal nature ; yet surely 
we can discover, even in the poorest weed, that life is 
something intrinsically more than a product of " the double 
interior motion, general and continuous, of composition 
and decomposition" carried on under the conditions of 
"an organism to sustain the renovation, and a medium 
to administer to the absorption and exhalation," as De 
Blainville and Compte assure us. Sentience, or conscious, 
felt experience, is something known to us in many various 
modes; both as related to ourselves personally, and as 
manifested by others ; and we find something kindred with 
this in even the lowest types of mind. If we can pre- 



The Constitution of Mind. 145 

sume to know anything of matter, to which we are only 
related through the principles of quantity, we can surely 
know still more of even the lowest mind, to which we are 
also related through quality. 

We have analogies to guide us. There are kindred 
relations existing between all minds and their organisms, 
and many of the phenomena are almost wholly identical. 
All organisms are similar in their material processes and 
functions ; they have numerous similitudes of relation 
and condition, which unmistakably group them together 
as a class. They are also distinctively unlike all inor- 
ganic, purely quantitative existence ; is it not probable, 
therefore, that they are all similarly coordinated with an 
indwelling, sentient, organizing life ? 

I now take it for granted that we must each admit 
our own nature to be essentially living, and therefore, 
personal and indivisible. We have, then, a knowledge of 
two broadly discriminated types of being — the one simply 
quantitative, unsentient, impersonal ; the other equally 
quantitative but also sentient and personal in all its char- 
acteristics. We have no knowledge of any substance dif- 
fering from one or other of these two types. We know 
also that some animals are undoubtedly gifted with sen- 
tient properties ; they suffer pleasure and pain as we do, 
manifesting this fact by unmistakable tokens. No one 
ever doubted that his horse or his cow could really suf- 
fer from a wound or from hunger or cold. Who has not 
perceived that a horse preferred fresh grass to stale hay, 
and good oats to dry chaff. Here, then, are evidences 
of sensation • but do our material senses experience the 
sensation ? or is it the mind which feels ? In ourselves 
we say without hesitation, it is mind alone which can feel ; 
then it is mind alone in the animal which can feel ! We 
see that a dog is more affectionate towards his master 
than to a stranger, and that many of his emotions ap 
proach more nearly to the lively manifestations of intel- 
10 



146 The Constitution of Mind. 

ligent joy than do those of the placid and harmless sheep. 
There is, then, a difference in their habitual modes of 
activity, and we recognize them as belonging to different 
classes of mind ; but if sentient properties necessitate 
a person, indivisible and unchangeable in substance, in 
which these properties inhere, then the horse, the dog, and 
the sheep, must have each a special persisting mind 
indwelling in its ever-changing organism. It is equally 
probable that all animals have minds, and just as prob- 
able that all plants also enjoy personal sentient lives. 
Many of them may exist together in a compound organism ; 
but the sensations of each, if there be any such, must per- 
tain to itself alone. 

The capabilities of different classes of mind for varying 
states of experience may be almost infinitely unlike ; and 
the activities of the same mind in different stages of its 
development, may vary unlimitedly. In every human 
mind, there are modes of force possible to it, unused, 
undeveloped ; and, therefore, in their present state un- 
usable to their fullest degree — thus there are capacities 
yet unfilled with the vivid experiences coordinated with 
them. How far, therefore, diversities which we usually 
refer to difference of constitutional properties, arise 
simply from the different exercise and general culture of 
similar mental powers, it must be quite impossible to de- 
termine with accuracy; yet it is certain that there are 
radically unlike types of sentient properties pertaining to 
different classes of mind, and radical differences also in 
individuals of the same class. We have pretty strong 
evidence that a vegetable can never be cultivated into 
a man ; and there is almost as strong a presumption that 
all men could not be educated into Bacons, Newtons, 
Washingtons, Napoleons, or Humboldts. It is fairly pre- 
sumable, however, that sentient capabilities are limited only 
as to the quality of their experiences ; while the amount 
of such .experiences not only may but must go on increas- 



The Constitution of Mind. 147 

ing indefinitely. The vegetable must steadily accumulate 
sensations of vegetable content, though it can never rise 
to the experiences of rational thought ; and the rational 
mind must habitually go on increasing experiences of its 
own class, absolutely without limit. So long as it acts at 
all, since its activities are all coordinated with some mode 
of sentient experience, there must be an ever-growing 
new creation of living emotions, thoughts, and purposes. 
These living or qualitative modes of being are not strictly 
measurable by amounts, although perpetually increasing ; 
nor can they be created by amounts. Related to quantity, 
they yet transcend all quantity \ and while nothing new can 
originate among simple quantitative modes, where every 
action is invariably followed by an exactly equal reaction, 
something new is perpetually originated in the sentient 
mind, where both the action and the reaction awaken 
experiences higher than themselves, of new, living, felt, 
enjoyment or suffering. 

Matter is constituted, apparently, in distinct elementary 
groups of individual atoms ; as oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, 
gold — each atom of every group being exactly equal 
and similar to every other atom of its class, but different 
from every atom of every other class. There are also 
groups or classes of individual minds ; as plants, fishes, 
insects, quadrupeds, men ; but are all the minds of any 
one group, as in matter, originally exactly equal in sentient 
properties, so that every one of a given class would be 
developed into the likeness of every other of its kind, if 
from the first all the conditions of its development could 
be the same ? As a matter of fact, no two minds are 
ever exactly alike in their development, and it is highly 
improbable that intensive properties should be extensively 
equalized in different minds. The coordinations of quan- 
tity require that every atom or mass of matter should be, 
in all its characteristics, exactly equal to every other like 
atom or mass. This is a mathematical necessity ; and if 



148 The Constitution of Mind. 

it were otherwise endless confusion would arise ; no one 
would be able to make reliable calculations, or to find 
any definite arrangement or fixed order in quantitative 
science. In qualitative science this is otherwise. No- 
thing in the general order or fitness of things requires 
that all the properties of each mind should be exactly- 
equal with those of every other of its class. These sen- 
tient properties can pertain only to the one being pos- 
sessing them ; and if every mind were entirely unique in 
sentient constitution, so much the more ample would be 
the richness and diversity of the whole hierarchy. We 
find no motive here for constituting all individuals of a 
class on the plan of rigid equalities ; and throughout the 
whole sentient universe they are not so constituted, or at 
least they are never exact equals in actual development. 
On the other hand, there are reasons of fitness arising 
from the intrinsic beauty which there is in endless variety, 
especially when found in connection with general types 
and resemblances, why each living being should be origi- 
nally endowed with a unique, special constitution of its own; 
resembling in general traits the qualities of its class, but 
differing in those almost undefinable characteristics which 
distinguish it from every other even of its own species. 

It is a well-known fact in organic development that each 
leaf and flower differs from every other, and that the higher 
the class, the greater and more numerous are the points of 
unlikeness. True, the material conditions are never pre- 
cisely the same with any two living things, and as this 
must produce a reflex influence upon the life indwelling in 
the organism, perhaps it would be unwise to dogmatize on 
a subject so little investigated ; yet, while it is a fact that 
every lily, gnat, whale, and elephant is and always has 
been extremely like its progenitors ; yet that no two lilies, 
gnats, whales, or elephants have ever been found to be 
exactly alike, it is probable that the differences as well as 
the resemblances, arise quite as much from mental as from 
material conditions. 



The Constitution of Mind. 149 

There are very many more types of being, and greatly 
wider differences in kind in the organic than in the inor- 
ganic world. This is as it should be in order to an equally 
harmonious and more comprehensive mental than material 
scheme ; required to perfect the symmetry of the creative 
plan. There is limitless difference in quality between 
mere vegetable sensibility, and the highest rational and 
moral attributes, with their conjoined emotions and voli- 
tions. Should there not, then, be radical differences of 
mental type, ranging all the way between the microscopic 
yeast plant, with its single-celled evanescent organism, and 
the beautiful human body with its simultaneous unity and 
heterogeneity of uses. Fortuitous combinations of matter 
must be subservient to the directive appetencies of sentient 
mind. 

Sentient force may act either spontaneously or reflec- 
tively ; but it acts always under the stimulus of some 
quality of pleasure or pain, affecting either itself or others. 
Spontaneous action is a reaction from something extra- 
mental which affects it, causing it to act in character upon 
a purely qualitative basis ; but in reflective action it chooses 
the mode of sentience in which it will at present indulge. 
In both cases it is constitutionally impelled to seek the 
pleasure and to shun the pain — to exert itself to find the 
one and to avoid the other. The appetencies of one mind 
may be able to secure for it no higher good than that of 
the lowest sensation, while those of another impel it also 
towards pure intellectual and moral emotions. The one 
may blindly follow impulse, obtaining its good through 
processes as much uncomprehended by itself, as are the 
modes in which mineral crystals are formed, uncompre- 
hended by the unconscious forces of matter ; while the 
other may act consciously, rationally, reflectively, ques- 
tioning every process, trying to fathom its whole nature 
and its relations, and selecting its means with direct refer- 
ence to the end in view. Both methods ultimate in real 



150 The Constitution of Mind. 

sentience ; both are incited to activity by the present 
stimulus of pleasure or pain. One appetency may be com- 
petent only to originate the feeblest effort which will build 
up and maintain the very lowest type of organism ; another 
may exercise control over a few insignificant foreign prop- 
erties, using them and subserving them unwittingly to its 
own weak enjoyments ; and yet another may impel its 
mind to obtain clear rational perceptions, to cultivate 
admirable constructive talent, or heroic, unselfish, and 
general social aims — the incentives are still pleasure and 
pain — good to be gained, evil to be avoided. ■ 

The capacities of any mind for pleasure and pain are 
evidently coordinated in quality with the modes of sentient 
force by which its experiences are to be acquired. A low 
and feeble capacity is allied to low and feeble appetencies, 
and the quality of the conjoined experience is compara- 
tively weak in kind and degree. A comprehensive capa- 
bility for enjoyment is always associated with acute and 
powerful sentient force, with its widely diverse convertible 
modes or moods of energy. 

All modes of sentient force are related both in quantity 
and quality ; and in the personal life of each mind are 
mutually convertible. We know by experience that pleas- 
ure and pain are nearly allied. The pleasure when too 
intense becomes pain, and from all extremely painful states 
of mind there is a natural rebound back again to the pleas- 
urable. Overwhelming grief is followed by its wonderful 
calm, or even by spontaneous, almost unwilling joy. The 
sincerest mourner has often been shocked in the midst of 
his sadness by some cheerful thought streaming athwart 
him like sunshine through the rent clouds ; and whoever 
has known heavy affliction must remember the sentiment 
of vague wonder with which he was aroused to find life 
flowing on like a resistless river of duties and pleasures, 
himself drifting along with the current. Exceeding joy is 
equally supervened by its intense* apathy, which sometimes 



The Constitution of Mind. 1 5 1 

becomes strongly painful ; or by irritability which lapses 
into ready and active grief. Many degrees exist in the 
same class of experiences which are vividly felt in every 
mind \ but for which we have yet no definite distinguishing 
terms. 

The least attention to the subject will convince us that 
the mind is never at rest in any of its modes, but is per- 
petually vibrating between the two sentient poles of the 
existing mode, and that it exchanges one mode for another 
with ready facility. In gazing at some wondrously beauti- 
ful object, the whole mind seems to be absorbed in percep- 
tion and all aglow with intense admiration. This is, per- 
haps, still more marked when the constructive or reflective 
mode is predominating — the mind is abstracted from 
everything except the one object upon which it is engaged ; 
it feels neither hunger nor thirst, heat nor cold \ its sentient 
activity is largely converted into the one dominant mode, 
and the whole being is in active, living sympathy. Moral 
and religious topics, long dwelt upon, will carry the mind 
up into spiritual exaltation, to the present exclusion of all 
earthly sympathies. These changes in mental states cor- 
respond to changes in modes of material motion. Several 
phases of mental activity may coexist, but every dominant 
mode necessitates the absorption of other modes into 
itself. One whose keenest and most constant pleasures 
are in sympathy with his intellect, is never a gross sensual- 
ist ; and he who lives habitually through the senses cannot 
readily exercise high intellectual or moral powers. An 
adequately developed, strong intellect may not be incom- 
patible with predominating sensuality, yet the two modes 
rarely or never exist cooperatively; they each rule in 
alternate epochs of activity. Almost every one must 
remember in his own experience that when he has been 
under the influence of some exalting moral emotion, he 
has been excited to intense disgust by some inopportune 
suggestion of sensual enjoyment. In an absorbing occu- 



1 5 2 The Constitution of Mind. 

pation he may have felt a positive loathing at food, and a 
general impatience at all interruption. It is always more 
or less painful, requiring a conscious effort, to turn from 
anything in which we are exceedingly interested — at least 
until satiety and weariness bring the reaction ; when for 
the time we may be as much repelled as we had just 
now been attracted. It is with a kind of forced volition, 
an almost painful determination of will, in which the 
reason plays the school-master over the inclinations, that 
we turn back to any subject from which we have been 
thoroughly diverted — no matter how much it may have 
interested us previously. The more concentrated our 
thoughts, and with them our emotions, whether pleasant 
or painful, the more violent is the involuntary indignation 
at any interference. Anger and revenge, base passions 
and not at all pleasant in the exercise, are yet as peremp- 
tory as despotic benevolence itself. The angry or vindic- 
tive man, for the time, feels wronged and defrauded by any 
attempt to divert him from his stormily uncomfortable 
mood. 

We might go on indefinitely, multiplying examples to 
illustrate the truth that there is a mutual convertibility or 
exchangeableness among all the modes of one's proper 
sentient energy. One and the same sentient force is 
variously exercised upon widely different objects, by dif- 
ferent means, for unlike ends, and by differing but coor- 
dinated processes. 

A similar relation exists between modes of force per- 
taining to different minds. Every one acts and reacts 
upon his neighbor continually. The orator plays upon the 
sympathies of his audience, swaying them to and fro at 
will, so that a whole assembly may sometimes be seen 
alternately bathed in tears or shaking with laughter. Re- 
sponsive, and willing to be influenced, for the present they 
think and feel as he does, returning to him again his own 
modes quickened by their sympathy ; but opposition once 



The Constitution of Mind. 153 

aroused, a public audience may become a very Babel 
of warring influences. All strong emotions are conta- 
gious. Great mental power in any direction is yielded to 
and acknowledged. Even the tamest person, like the 
coldest article in a warm room, is a centre of radiating 
influences. Evidently here are coordinations embracing 
all minds, all organisms, and matter in general. There 
must be a social order in mental adaptations as much 
higher than that which controls simple matter as sentience 
itself is higher than unsentience ! 





COORDINATIONS OF GROWTH. 

| HE mode of growth in all organisms is essen- 
tially the same. All growth is effected by the 
continued addition of minute, often microscopic 
vesicles called cells. All cells originate from fluids, grow- 
ing either in the interior of preceding cells or developed 
free in the vegetable and animal fluids ; as in liquids dur- 
ing fermentation, and in blood, lymph, and chyle. In all 
higher organisms, one cell goes on adding to itself another 
and another, and these yet others, all acting by entirely 
similar, though slightly differing processes, till from the 
original germ, the body of every living thing is gradually 
added or grows, particle by particle. Leaf, blossom, fruit, 
and wood are all formed by the aggregation of cells, equally 
with flesh, bones, hair, and nails. All secretions and prod- 
ucts generally of every organism are effected by means 
of cells j food is introduced into the organism by cells, 
and even sensation, locomotion, volition, and in short, 
all action, is carried on through the agency of organ- 
ized cells. With the dissolution of each particular cell the 
matter composing it drifts again out of the organism and 
is no longer a component part of it. The cell formation 
is the universal mode through which inorganic matter is 
organized and brought into active cooperation with the 
rest of the body. Material force in the already organized 
cell, attracts and modifies adapted inorganic particles, till 
it brings all their modes into cooperation with its own, 
they also assuming the cell constitution and becoming, for 
the time, integral portions of the organism. 



Coordinations of Growth. 155 

Just in this connection must we look for the distinctive 
influence of the mind upon its organism, and, if possible, 
discover the generic difference between organic and inor- 
ganic material processes. Is " the principle of life " or 
" vital affinity," which I maintain to be the distinctive or- 
gan-forming power, something which works on the same 
or a radically different principle from the simply unsentient 
forces ? Chemical affinity always combines like compounds 
from like substances under like conditions \ crystallogenic 
affinity, with the same conditions, constructs only homoge- 
neous crystals ; and all unsentient forces, from like causes, 
produce like results. The living force certainly has no 
more direct, conscious volition as to the structure of its 
body than have these other equally constructive forces. 
Who by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature ? 
or can make one hair white or black ? Which of us has 
predetermined to be a human being rather than a pea- 
cock, and has made himself such through his own voli- 
tion ? We exist by conditions higher than ourselves. We 
possess neither our sentient natures, nor yet our adapted 
organisms, from our own free choice. We may conscious- 
ly develop and beautify both mind and body when we 
have learned to understand their needs, or we may willfully 
dwarf and weaken either ; being able, even, ruthlessly to 
sever the bond between ourselves and our present organ- 
isms ; but we cannot destroy the system of inherent co- 
ordinations through which our minds are forever allied to 
all other things whatsoever. We cannot permanently dis- 
sociate ourselves either from matter or from other minds. 
Vital force must co-work with vital processes. 

Each sentient being is, apparently, intrinsically and radi- 
cally an organ-forming being. To live at all, he must live 
in the exercise of his own proper appetencies, and to exer- 
cise these he must control coordinated matter to this end ; 
that is, he must build up an adapted organism. The low- 
est plants and animals, seeming to be wholly without ra- 



156 Coordinations of Growth. 

tional ideas or volitions, yet make for themselves bodies 
admirably adapted to their several needs. There is abso- 
lute unconsciousness of the relation of means to ends, yet 
the end is secured ; the sentient atom, cooperating with 
matter as blindly as oxygen and nitrogen do in their at- 
mospheric union, is yet clothed upon by an organism pre- 
eminently suited to it. The wisdom which alike coordi- 
nated all these " affinities " with the special work which 
each is to perform, is the only wisdom. Examples of 
chemical selection, of chemical marvels in general, are 
equally wonderful with kindred illustrations of organic ac- 
tion. 

The grand evidence of a generic difference between or- 
ganic and inorganic processes is found in the fact that 
while among inorganic substances every atom and mass of 
matter behaves exactly like every other atom and mass of 
its kind, in all possible relations, so that everything which 
can be predicted of it can be equally predicted of every 
other of its class — with organic substances the very re- 
verse of this is true. The widest diversity of form and 
functions perpetually arises from substances identical in 
all known material properties : the most unlike, and, judg- 
ing by quantitative standards alone, the most unlikely dif- 
ferences spring up continually ; so that it may be laid 
down as a universal rule that from homogeneous material ele- 
ments^ in all organic processes, there arise heterogeneous 
results. The simple cell itself is an organ ; and all organic 
processes are organizing or differentiating processes. It 
is an equally universal law, that from homogeneous material 
elements, in all inorganic processes, under like conditions, 
there arise homogeneous results. Doubtless this would be 
true also with organic processes, if with them, it were ever 
possible to realize the like conditions ; but as each organ- 
ism is necessarily under the special control of a sentient 
being, with many special appetencies and capabilities per- 
taining to itself alone, these organize or differentiate the 



Coordinations of Growth. 157 

homogeneous elements in accordance with their own sen- 
tient necessities. 

One piece of gold behaves everywhere exactly like all 
other gold in like relations, whether pure or in any of its 
possible combinations ; one grain of sulphur acts always 
exactly like every other grain of sulphur, and one drop of 
pure water is, in every respect, and under all conditions, 
exactly like every other drop of pure water in similar rela- 
tions. On the other hand, while the first material nucleus 
of every organism, vegetable and animal, is essentially 
identical ; while all organisms originate under similar con- 
ditions, in connection with similar functions, differing only 
in the general variety incident to the wide range of varying 
economies pertaining to vegetable and animal life, and 
while their subsequent development is effected through 
the assistance of essentially the same materials, utilized 
through generally identical processes of composition, and 
rejected again by similar processes of decomposition ; yet 
every sentient life is found to be coordinated with a unique 
organism of its own, constructed after a special permanent 
type of its kind, while the almost infinite diversity among 
them is a fact eliciting our endless admiration. 

Neither the microscope nor chemical tests can, in the 
earliest stages of growth, distinguish between the germs 
of a reptile, an insect, a quadruped, or a human infant ; 
if, then, quantitative influences alone were called into 
action, it should be possible to develope them all into 
similar forms, causing any one to assume the type of either 
of the others, or in any event to approximate towards this 
result. Supposing that we are sufficiently skilled in using 
the requisite material aids, on this theory, the insatiable 
crocodile should be actually transformable into the harm- 
less ox \ at any rate we ought essentially to vary the con- 
formation of his organism by effecting a radical change of 
all his material conditions. There have been many exper- 
iments made in this direction, conducted with all the nicety 



158 Coordinations of Growth. 

of precision and perseverance which the exact quantita- 
tiveness of physical science has cultivated in physical 
investigators, yet no transformation nor considerable mod 
ification of type has ever been effected. The untypical 
modifications, — and there have been many such, produ- 
cing wide superficial variations and minor differences even 
of structure, about which so much has been written by 
the physical-development theorists, — are clearly referable 
either to an abnormal development or repression of cer- 
tain mental appetencies out of due proportion to others, 
with their corresponding development of organs ; or, much 
more frequently, to changes of food, climate, and other 
similar material conditions, producing only insignificant 
organic and coordinated mental results. To this subject 
I shall refer again in its place. 

The preestablished organic type has not been found to 
be essentially varied by external circumstances. The 
organism may be dwarfed, weakened, and malformed by 
privation, or strengthened by material comfort and abun- 
dance ; it may be distorted in the offspring by persistent 
" selection " of parental peculiarities tending thereto, or 
beautified in the posterity by a similar selection of beauti- 
ful traits in the progenitors ; and there is some rather du- 
bious evidence that by persistent use or disuse, through 
many generations, some organ might be produced or 
suppressed in the posterity, or transformed and diverted 
from its original use to some similar end better suited than 
the original one to the subsequent habits of the family ; as 
island insects have been supposed to lose the use of their 
dangerous wings, which are perhaps gradually soldered up 
in their cases, or converted into jaws or legs for their 
greater advantage ; but hdwever this may be, — and such a 
result is not only possible, but probable, and supported by 
analogy everywhere, — yet no creature, vegetable or animal, 
has been known to develop into any other than his essen- 
tial family type, or to lose or gain any mental property 



Coordinations of Growth. 159 

through any series of external influences whatsoever. If, 
as I maintain, it is the permanent, sentient type of the liv- 
ing being, which by its modifying influence determines the 
character of its organism, this must continue to be a uni- 
versal fact. Crocodile's eggs, taken from their native 
sands and hatched artificially, will produce young croco- 
diles still. They are no larger than the eggs of a goose ; 
but if the poor goose should incubate them she would rue 
the inborn dominant nature of her crocodile brood. Food, 
temperature, new surroundings, nothing can greatly mod- 
ify the amphibious saurian organism. Innate sentient 
appetencies, to which there is nothing analogous among 
the properties of matter, will fashion the crocodile organ- 
ism, just as all other like appetencies have built up similar 
organisms responsive to their needs, and will continue to 
use and maintain the same by continual repair, so long as 
it is able to perpetuate all the combinations necessary to 
effect this result. Thus, beginning at a common material 
starting point, the special sentient life in the mustard-seed, 
cooperating with its fellows, builds up the mustard-tree, 
the oaklet and its clan produce the oak, the clamlet or- 
ganizes the clam, and the higher needs of the sentient 
human soul create the nobler human form. All this is 
done in unconsciousness ; for the coordinations effecting 
it are outside even of human consciousness ; yet the pro- 
cesses through which all is produced are carried progres- 
sively forward from the beginning, so that skillful embry- 
ologists claim to be able to distinguish the future mollusk, 
radiate, articulate, or vertebrate, in an almost microscopic 
organism, which the uninitiated could scarcely discern at 
all with the naked eye. 

When we take food into the system, what combination 
of simply quantitative forces can convert that food into 
hand, or foot, or brain, or any other special organ ? Foot 
and hand are essentially alike in all material properties. 
What agency, then, has made the one hand and the other 



160 Coordinations of Growth. 

foot? What simply chemical action can transform the 
same elements, chiefly carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and ni- 
trogen, into leg in the quadruped and wing in the bird ? 
into ear that can hear and tongue that can speak ? Chem- 
ical affinities might select ingredients adapted to become 
bone or skin or hair, but neither in chemistry nor mechan- 
ics are there enough pure unsentient principles upon which 
to construct the unlike bony skeletons of articulates and 
vertebrates. 

The results are indeed quantitative throughout. A 
given amount of food will produce a like amount of or- 
ganism, minus the residuum of rejected portions ; but 
another and higher type of sentient forces determines the 
kind or quality of organs best suited to its needs. He 
who coordinated all things must have chosen the type of 
each class of organism, as He did that of each mineral 
crystal ; but while, in the latter case, his plan can be 
actualized by combinations of simple matter, in the for- 
mer, living, sentient experiences are the directive influence 
needed to consummate his designs. Each living thing, 
having its own inherent sentient properties, which, when 
either acting or acted upon, give it personal pleasures or 
pains of a specific character ; these various sentient expe- 
riences are made the ever-recurring stimuli, impelling it 
responsively to energize in the direction which will build 
up and sustain an organism best adapted to its needs. 
The feelings of a small fungus must be equally unlike the 
mercurial pleasure of a dancing insect, and the reflective 
enjoyments of a human being. Each needs, therefore, a 
correspondingly unlike organism, adapted to its own qual- 
ity of existence. A vegetable as highly endowed as man 
is with various appetencies, impelled by its innate powers 
to as acute sensations, as busy thoughts, as intense emo- 
tions, and to as wide a range of volitions, must become 
dissatisfied and even intensely miserable. Rooted to the 
earth, without locomotion, and with almost no material 



Coordinations of Growth. 161 

forces under its control, by which to gratify its desires or 
to execute its volitions, its whole life would be a hopeless 
mockery. Its seething, tumultuous passions, in unresting 
ferment, but with no outlet, would become intolerable 
torture. We find no such practical mistakes. Sentient 
demand and the adapted supply are everywhere commen- 
surate. The appetency and its conjoined capacity for 
experiences are direct incentives to the growth of its spe- 
cially coordinated organ ; so that fungi, insects, and men, 
ally themselves alike to responsive organisms, coordinated 
with the necessities of the living tenants. 

Certainly we are now pressing closely upon the ground 
of sheerest hypothesis, and unless we can indicate the 
process by which an appetency can create its adapted 
organ, and sentience in general promote organization gen- 
erally, it may count only as so much reckless theorizing. 
Any present treatment of the topic must be immature ; 
but it may point the way in the right direction ! Hunger 
is a well-known experience which excites directly to the 
taking of food. The gratification which attends the nor- 
mal exercise of this function, as well as the discomfort of 
hunger itself, when excessive, alike prompt us to eat. 
These several sensations are, like all others, purely men- 
tal ; yet they are directly allied to the state of the body at 
the time. Under normal conditions, hunger is only felt 
when the organism is in need of material for growth or 
repair ; it is the appetency impelling to the search after a 
supply, thus serving as an ever-recurring stimulus to all 
coordinated organs, upon whose action depends the adop- 
tion and organization of the new matter introduced through 
the influence of its special promptings. Here, as it seems, 
the work of this special appetency (hunger) is at an end. 
It has accomplished the part assigned it, and is advertised 
of the fact by the sensation of content, pleasantly follow- 
ing the supply. The process is then taken up by related 
ii 



1 62 Coordinations of Growth. 

forces, sentient and unsentient, and carried forward to 
completion. 

In treating of the possible nature of coordinated organic 
processes, it will be necessary to consider the subject from 
different stand-points, and to treat of it at length. 

We possess a general consciousness of many various 
modes of physical energy, which it is pleasant to call into 
exercise. We are impelled to various kinds of unceasing 
activity by impulses which are not easy to define, but of 
which we are all distinctly aware, so that the body is never 
quite at rest, either as a whole or in any of its parts. We 
move a finger, we wink the eye, we breathe, we walk. We 
find ourselves made up of many different series of prompt- 
ing energies, ever impelling us to act, act, act. These 
several modes of energy are perpetual stimuli to corre- 
sponding modes of exertion, and so also is the reflex enjoy- 
ment which springs from the normal exercise of every 
function, in a healthy condition of the system. Every 
natural movement has its attending satisfaction, while both 
inaction and excessive activity give proportional discom- 
fort, and often positive pain. We are subject, therefore, 
both to the impelling force and its resulting experience ; 
each in their very nature directive, by prompting towards 
the pleasurable and warning away from the painful. 

If, then, we all experience a need for general unresting 
activity of the body and mind, often to no special end 
directly conscious to ourselves ; but because we are incited 
thereto by an ever-active sense of force, prompting to per- 
sonal exertion, is not this general restless impetus the 
universal prompter to all processes of organization ? 

Suppose the appetency for action, change, effort in gen- 
eral, to be first awakened in the nascent mind through 
some new coordinations adapted to excite it, this first new- 
born sensation would be accompanied by its appropriate 
satisfaction, and both experiences would react against co- 
operating forces, demanding more, more ! To this demand 



Coordinations of Growth. 163 

the nascent organism would be responsive in turn \ the 
organic action would reawaken the appetency, and the re- 
acting appetency adjust itself to new materials, bringing 
these also into the just forming organic germ-cell — thus 
sentient experience would increase, and under its influence, 
adapted atom be added to atom, till the appropriate ma- 
ture organization was completed. 

No new adjustment of unsentient forces can be sup- 
posed to awaken present active sentience in an atom, with 
a nature intrinsically unsentient ; but if every atom, whether 
sentient or unsentient, is constituted from the beginning, — 
all its properties, whether merely quantitative, or qualita- 
tive also, being definitely established with all their possi- 
ble coordinations, and waiting only the conditions under 
which they can be merely exercised if simply quantitative, 
or exercised with their coordinated sentient experiences, 
if also qualitative, — then it is no more surprising that 
adapted conditions should first awaken and afterwards 
continue a distinct developed consciousness or sentience 
in the sentient atom, than that they should call forth the 
exercise of some hitherto unexercised mode of force in a 
material atom. No one would suppose that the mild drop 
of tasteless water might, under some conditions, become 
scalding steam, and under others freezing ice, if expe- 
rience had not revealed the fact. Undeveloped mental 
atoms may exist in a state of semi-consciousness from the 
creation, or sentience may even be wholly latent and in- 
operative ; yet, being once awakened into active life by the 
right conditions, they can from the nature of things never 
relapse again into the undevelopment of the past. In the 
first germ-cell, life must begin already to act responsively, 
in conjunction with the material forces in its growing 
organism. Processes of composition and decomposition 
are already inaugurated, and must repeat themselves with- 
out cessation, or else the organism cease to exist. It must 
continue to be an organism capable of administering to 



164 Coordinations of Growth. 

the demands of a nature, which, as sentient or intensive, 
may act by repetition or by increasing intensity or variety 
of living experiences ; thus making upon its organism con- 
tinuous demands of service, impelling it unceasingly to 
organize new substance, and as continually to cast out the 
old, which, having served its uses, is no longer available. 
The first series of distinct feelings must inaugurate the 
organized germ-cell, and continued sensation with other 
allied experiences continue the growth of a coordinated 
organism. On the other hand, the action of adapted ex- 
ternal forces upon a mind not yet quickened to the exer- 
cise of sentient powers, is probably, in the nature of things, 
the ordained process by which the lowest phase of life, 
sensation, is first called into actual exercise, and in turn, 
sensation, type and fore-runner of all living experience, 
must inaugurate the reacting mental stimulus to all or- 
ganic processes. Why should not the earliest appetencies 
act on matter from the first attempt at organism, instinc- 
tively adjusting it to its needs ? At a later period, we per- 
ceive the cooperation of mental and material forces in a 
continuous process which we know began in the fluid 
drop, not yet assimilated into the first germ-cell, and will 
continue till the relation between the mind and its body is 
finally dissolved. We are justified therefore in thinking, 
that, from the first, the mind with all its nascent properties 
is a present and active partner. 

Every mental act, in connection with its organism, seems 
to be as directly related to organic development as heat 
applied to water is related to steam, or as gravity is related 
to motion. The earliest mode of sentience produces the 
simplest and typical form of organic growth — the simple 
cell — which is radically alike in all organisms. But the 
modes of force may be many and various in every individ- 
ual mind ; and still greater is the variety among the dif- 
ferent types of mind. I am fully convinced that the kind 
and degree of each appetency, classed according to its 



Coordinations of Growth. 165 

present general state of development and activity, must be 
regarded as determining the character of its coordinated 
organ ; and as appetencies are associated in cooperative, 
harmonious groups, it is emphatically the mental consti- 
tution which not only uses but produces its adapted or 
ganism. 

The bird possesses an evident most restless appetency 
for flight. Bred up in a cage, he beats his wings against 
the bars in impotent seeking after the gratification of this 
impulse ; once freed, he soars through the air in manifest 
delight and exhilaration. This appetency can be satisfied 
only by actual flight, as hunger is appeased only by its 
adapted supply. Can we not, then, appreciate the evi- 
dence, that here is a directive stimulus, energizing perpet- 
ually in one specific direction, and that the growth of the 
coordinated organ, the wing, is the legitimate result? 
Afterwards, use, the actual flight of the bird, strengthens 
and perfects the organ by a precisely analogous process. 
In both cases it is the controlling mental energy, using, 
and therefore coordinating matter with its own sentient 
ends, which both produces and maintains the organ. Use 
of the organ, in general, directly relates other material 
forces to it, by organizing their substances also. The dis- 
proportionate use of any organ, as wing, arm, brain, or any 
other part of the organism, directly relates the unassimi- 
lated food in the system to its repair, building up its waste, 
and strengthening it in particular. We can tie up an arm, 
hindering the mind in its action through that organ, and 
the arm will steadily wither and perish ; or we may 
strengthen and enlarge every muscle, as the blacksmith 
does, by incessant use. Thus any part of the organism 
may be weakened or strengthened by judicious use of 
means ; yet no system of external means can altogether 
destroy the appetency. No protracted disuse of any organ, 
even for many generations, has been found sufficient to 
suppress the organ wholly, in any animal belonging to a 



1 66 Coordinations of Growth. 

class possessing it. Nature makes at least a rudimentary 
attempt at forming it, and, doubtless, let the conditions at 
any time become favorable for this, the appetency and its 
organ would both develop alike. The goose retains its 
webbed feet, comparatively useless appendages where 
there is no water to swim in ; but bring the poor goose 
into the neighborhood of any ditch or pool, and it imme- 
diately commences paddling therein with preeminent satis- 
faction. The appetency is sufficiently active, not only to 
maintain the organ in its proper development, but also to 
seek out every occasion for its fullest exercise. Fish in 
the Mammoth Cave, without light from the earliest genera- 
tions, have at most but the veriest rudiments of eyes. 
Amblyopsis speltzus wants even the orbital cavity, yet 
here under the most unfavorable conditions the organism 
of the craw-fish {Astacus pellucidus) affords still the evi- 
dence of an unexercised but native appetency for sight. 
It would be a pleasant and curious experiment to intro- 
duce these fish into the sunshine, and watch for the 
gradual development of their organs of vision. 

In the fitness of things, the kind and degree of sentient 
modes pertaining to any mind, should determine the struc- 
ture and form of its adapted organ. The quadruped, 
whose appetencies are chiefly instincts, and whose instincts 
are related mainly to sensations, can do very well with 
legs alone ; but man, whose moods are largely reflective, 
whose reflections connect means and ends, and lead to 
selection of modes, has need of arms also. His right 
hand is the complement of his head, and neither would be 
of much executive value without the other. He energizes 
as impelled in the direction of his many appetencies, 
and the material elements cooperate, adjusting themselves, 
cell by cell, in an organism much more perfect than that 
of any other creature. Spontaneously, rather than reflec- 
tively, he energizes as he is — a being of marked and 
various modes ; and the result is a growth and mainten- 



Coordinations of Growth. 167 

ance not of stomach, lungs, or heart alone, but of brains 
also, and a mind within, directive of the whole harmonious 
organism. A like correspondence is found throughout the 
organic kingdom. 

We can trace the organism from a microscopic point, 
step by step, through all its processes of growth ; we know 
whence it came and whither it goeth, by following the ele- 
ments which it borrows and returns again to the common 
environment ; but who shall point with no uncertain finger 
to either the beginning or the ending of a sentient exist- 
ence? We perceive that new sensations are awakened 
within us by any modification of our organisms ; and that 
minds in the youngest organisms manifest like sensations 
with ourselves arising from like causes ; we must, there- 
fore, infer that sensation was originally awakened in the 
nascent, but already constituted living mind, through the 
action upon it of coordinated external forces. But this 
mind must have been constitutionally endowed with life or 
sentience from the first, at least in the same sense in which 
we are endowed with the capacity for experiencing sensa- 
tions when acted upon through the senses. The sensation 
may be something yet in the future ; but the appetency 
for it, and the capability 7 of experiencing it, are inherent in 
the mind as the fundamental elements of its nature. Thus 
all sentient modes possible to any mind must have been 
definitely determined and constitutionally inwrought within 
it 1 and perfectly related also to all coordinated elements. 
Sentience, that is felt or experienced activity, is the dis- 
tinctive characteristic of all living things ; and if an atom 
constituted by a sentient nature has not yet experienced 
this, it is not yet actively alive, though it must exist, and 
being quantitatively cooperative with other atoms about it, 
unless perpetually in conditions where sentience is latent 
or at rest, as in sleep, there must be a general undeveloped 
sentient experience even from the first. 

Living force and capacity may pertain to absolute sub- 



1 68 Coordinations of Growth. 

stance; but a created mind is a sentient unit, endowed 
with special created modes of sentient property, so coor- 
dinated with each other and with all coexisting modes of 
things, as to be enabled to exist and act with a predeter- 
mined nature. Just as gravity, heat, electricity, etc., are 
all created forces — that is, self-existent force related in 
definite modes, through established laws, regulating all 
their possible processes ; or as carbon, oxygen, and other 
elementary substances, are created or constituted sub- 
stances, with fixed related properties which must exist 
and act in special modes and motions under all like con- 
ditions ; so minds are created or constituted each with a 
definite sentient nature of its own, with specially coordi- 
nated determinate characteristics. One mind is consti- 
tuted a vegetable, whose sentience is to ultimate in sensa- 
tions ; another an animal, with both sensations and per- 
ceptions, and yet others with special types of unlike prop- 
erties, rising higher and higher, till we reach man with 
rational and moral powers coordinated, like his Maker's, 
with the pure principles of things generally. A scheme 
of harmonized thought, embracing everything which is 
known to us, is thus seen to have been applied and real- 
ized in things, so that everything continually exists and 
acts in character. With such a definition, it is evident 
that our personal life not only may have had, but must 
have had a beginning ; that there must have been to all 
created minds a first definite sensation as well as a first 
remembered experience. From this feeble commencement 
must gradually have arisen to each of us the many vivid 
experiences of our whole remembered existence. Origi- 
nally we were constituted with sentient possibilities to be 
finally realized under certain conditions. Having found 
these established conditions, we live actively, consciously ; 
we are cooperative sentient minds. He who gave us our 
original constitutions, determined also the circumstances 
under which we should begin the proper development of 
our sentient properties. 



Coordinations of Growth. 169 

An adjustment of many complicated conditions was evi- 
dently necessary to this wonderful awakening into active 
sentient being. In the existing economy of nature, the 
higher the type of mind, the more rare and beautiful are 
all the accessories requisite to initiate its development. 
The lower orders of being are often " asexually " devel- 
oped. The new life seems able to spring up under even 
widely different sets of conditions ; and one may even 
suppose that among compound organisms, whose offspring 
sometimes differ widely in form, two or more different sen- 
tient classes may really be found growing together under 
nearly the same conditions ; each drawing material sus- 
tenance through the same organs. When a nectarine is 
found growing on a peach or a plum tree, or a real peach 
maturing on the stem of an almond • or a tree bearing 
peaches and almonds indifferently, 1 these and similar 
" sports " of nature seem to indicate that the sentient 
element in these beings is so similar that some living atom 
may easily arise abnormally in the circle of near kinsfolk \ 
and yet that its own special mental properties, prevailing 
over its origin, have power to develop it after its kind. 
However this may be, the higher the sentient type, the 
fewer are the numbers reproduced ; and the more complex 
the reproductive coordinations. This is as it should be in 
the fitness of things. 

Sexual appetencies lead to reproduction — to that class 
of coordinations, mental and material, by which an organ- 
ism originated in connection with parental functions, begins 
to exist, animated and directed by a life of its own. There 
is an eminent moral fitness in the prearrangement requir- 
ing the cooperation of the two sexes in this mental birth ; 
at least of all the higher types of being, thus establishing 
a condition which will insure the new mind that it will be 
properly related socially to other sentient beings. Not 
only are the strongest mere passions and instincts called 

1 Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. 



170 Coordinations of Growth. 

into exercise through parental relations ; but among 
rational and responsible beings, some of the sweetest, 
most unselfish social emotions are quickened in both 
parents and children. Desires and purposes seeking the 
good of others even dearer than self, are directly stimu- 
lated in the family circle ; and while parents are quickened 
to unselfish love, and to the exercise of their highest moral 
appetencies, the child is also aroused to the earliest exer- 
cise of self-forgetfulness. Common interests arise between 
the parents, and these among rational beings descend to 
the children and the children's children, widening in many 
directions. Family love is the broad stepping-stone to 
universal good-will ! 

We have no reason to suppose that the proper mental 
constitution is in any sense derived from its progenitors, 
or that it receives from either parent anything except such 
preadjusted conditions as will secure its own proper devel- 
opment. 

Does mind increase in substance ? in amount of prop- 
perties ? Assuredly not ! Then in what does the nor- 
mal growth of mind consist ? What is mental develop- 
ment ? We know that mind cannot grow by additions to 
its substance, as body does, since mind is permanently 
unchanged and identical in substance. We perceive a 
persisting personal identity in ourselves and in others. 
The man is the identical being which he was as a child ; 
and yet this persisting somewhat, unchanging in substance 
and in its sentient constitution, has acquired a continual 
increase of experiences of many different kinds. Thus 
mental growth is evidently growth or increase in the 
amount, strength, or variety of sentient experience ; and 
in an acquired discipline of the mental attributes by which 
these experiences may be still farther accumulated ! A 
child constantly perceives new objects, acquires new prin- 
ciples, learns to compare likenesses and differences, to 
observe, reflect, judge, reason, and choose wisely on many 



Coordinations of Growth. 171 

points ; and therefore we say that he has grown mentally, 
though he has added nothing to the substance of his men- 
tal nature. He has acquired no new sentient property or 
mode of experience, though he may have developed and 
disciplined many hitherto unused modes which were yet 
germain to his nature, existing potentially in his persisting 
constitution. 

All actualized experiences constitute the mental wealth 
of their possessor. One's perceptions and conceptions, his 
joys and sorrows, his plans, thoughts, and purposes, remain 
as really and exclusively his own possessions, as does the 
personal consciousness to which they pertain. They are a 
perpetual new creation, a qualitative increase, which is for- 
ever accumulating, unlike mere quantitative values which 
must, from their nature, remain unchanged in amount. 
All quantitative values merely change their modes, but 
can become neither more nor less in consequence ; but 
every new sentient mode is a positive new gain to its 
possessor. He may or may not forget in time that he has 
ever enjoyed it ; but the present enjoyment was an abso- 
lute good. It could neither be measured by time, nor 
space, nor number, nor any other simply quantitative esti- 
mate, yet it had a felt value of its own, peculiar to all sen- 
tient modes, and which remains a thing actual in itself; 
being never transmuted into anything else. The sentient 
mode may change • one thought or feeling may glide into 
another ; but there is all the time an increase of sentient 
value, not an exchange of one kind for another, as among 
all quantities. 

It is precisely this qualitative element — this endless in- 
crease of sentient good, which mind cannot get from mat- 
ter as cause. But if the capacity for sentience preexists — 
as we hold that it does from the first constitution of the 
atom — then a conjunction of quantitative influences may 
readily excite these qualitative experiences. Material 
coordinations are occasions or conditions conducing to 



172 Coordinations of Growth. 

the proper mental activity. Mental growth, therefore, is 
growth in mental experience, and in the consequent disci- 
pline of the mind through which similar experiences are 
acquired. 

Hereditary traits and tendencies, apparently mental as 
well as physical, and transmitted from generation to gen- 
eration, are a peculiar feature of lineal descent which we 
are called upon carefully to consider. The child possesses 
a definite unchanging mental constitution of its own ; how 
then shall we explain the often close mental resemblance 
to one or both parents? What satisfactory explanation 
can be given of inherited family traits, either mental or 
physical ? Why indeed, need the offspring, since it pre- 
exists with a mentality of its own, even belong at all to 
the same type of mind with its progenitors ? These are 
three several questions, each demanding a distinct answer 
of its own. The last, which is most general in principle, 
we will consider first Why, then, if every sentient atom 
is a mind with an original fixed constitution of its own ; 
on its attainment to the exercise of sentient powers 
why should every new life begin to exist in connection with 
progenitors of its own type ? Why should not the rose- 
tree produce lilies and the lion give birth to the lamb ? 

We might reasonably answer, Because He who coordi- 
nated all things prearranged otherwise ; but as we have 
never found that He apparently acts either without suffi- 
cient reason, or except through adequate means, we are 
bound to offer a more satisfactory statement of probable 
proximate causes and processes. The highest fitness of 
things, aesthetic, physical, and moral, requires that the ex- 
isting broad principle of order should be maintained, 
providing generally that each living creature should pro- 
duce seed after its kind. Each new life must necessarily 
find the most fitting conditions for its proper development 
in connection with its own class, whose sentient needs, and 
therefore all depending adjustments, are kindred with its 



Coordinations of Growth. 173 

own. The same principle which requires that appetencies 
and capabilities should ally themselves to an adapted or- 
ganism at all, in order to their own proper activity, would 
require also that the nascent life should find proper condi- 
tions already prepared for it ; and this, of course, could 
only be properly done in connection with beings intrinsi- 
cally like itself. Again, the harmony of life would be 
destroyed if the rational parent were left in doubt as to 
whether the nature of his offspring would be kindred with 
his own, or whether he should give birth to some creature 
in a plane of life so remote that there would be, if not 
positive antagonism, at least but few common sympathies, 
and little common love. The bare thought is so utterly 
repulsive and subversive of all beautiful sympathies that 
it is the strongest possible argument in favor of the estab- 
lished order. Should the lioness find herself the mother 
of lambs, would she love them or eat them ? Unless we 
would subvert the entire system of creative coordinations, 
we must maintain those which initiate the new life into the 
exercise of its new functions. 

But, through what special adjustments has this almost 
universal order been established ? Evidently through the 
mutual cooperation — the perpetual action and reaction of 
the mind and its organism, mutually stimulating each other 
by the simple principle of use or exercise. Each new ex- 
perience gained by the mind is a discipline of its powers 
in that direction, continually preparing it for repeated, if 
not increasing, like experience ; while the organism, also, 
once started in any direction, goes on repeating the tend- 
ency thereto by organizing new forces to cooperate with it, 
precisely as any other mode of material action tends to 
continue and communicate itself. As a blow from a club 
sends the ball forward in the direction it was itself pursu- 
ing, so the already efficient organs impel forward the ele- 
ments continually introduced afresh, in the direction in 
which they themselves are tending \ and as the club, com- 



174 Coordinations of Growth. 

municating its mode of motion to the ball, gives up so 
much of its forward impulse, accepting an equal reaction- 
ary mode in return, so the old organism transmitting its 
own modes of activity to the new elements, accepts others 
in exchange, gradually losing its organic coordinations 
thereby, and dropping back again into the inorganic 
world. No quantitative force is either gained or lost by 
the process ; but the continual change or renovation pe- 
culiar to all organisms is thus effected. There may be con- 
tinuous and perpetuated processes of matter, and these 
would doubtless be effected in the organism if it could be 
coordinated independent of an indwelling mind ; but no 
series of simply material elements could give any positive 
gain, although there might be increased heterogeneity such 
as is effected through new combinations in inorganic pro- 
cesses. But just here, in all organisms, interposes the sen- 
tient influence. Activity in any direction having quickened 
coordinated experiences, this special quality of experience 
reacts, not quantitatively merely ; but, the largely developed 
appetency, once aroused to special vigor, diverts other 
modes of experience into its own. The appetency is a 
new and added element over and above all quantities ; so 
that although they still cooperate on the most rigid quanti- 
tative principles as hitherto, yet the new sentient element 
becomes at once directive of the unsentient. Thus does 
every qualitative or felt activity tend not only to perpetu- 
ate but to increase itself, though perhaps first excited by 
purely physical agencies. Given the sentient appetency 
as a preexisting possible mode, and no matter what shall 
first excite it, its disproportionate activity in any direction, 
other things being equal, tends directly to perpetuate itself. 
In the light of this principle, let us suppose that either 
parent possesses some marked mental trait ; this will nat- 
urally express itself in the parental organism with corre- 
sponding prominence. It must do so more or less, if, as 
we have tried to show, the mind is the proper architect of 



Coordinations of Growth. 175 

its own body. The new organism will thus begin with 
its material functions allied in the closest harmony with the 
parental functions, so that, unless the adjustments are dis- 
turbed, the physical peculiarities will go on developing in 
the child in the same ratios as in the parent. On the prin- 
ciple, then, that sentient properties are excited from with- 
out, tending thenceforth to repeat and increase themselves, 
we fully account for the apparent inheritance of even 
mental traits. Though the new being has its own immu- 
table sentient constitution awaiting development, it finds 
the coordinated conditions for its development in connec- 
tion with natures kindred with its own, and its various 
legitimate modes of sentient growth are influenced by the 
physical modifications already existing in connection with 
the parental organism. Doubtless no class of modifica- 
tions can go any farther than to stimulate existing mental 
properties unduly in one direction rather than another, 
possibly to the retarding of other correlated or antago- 
nized modes of power. Certainly no sentient attribute 
can be originated by any possible combinations of pa- 
rental influence \ and yet, little by little, the child will nor- 
mally develop under the same leading influences with 
which he first began life ; and will, therefore, grow both 
mentally and physically in the likeness of his parent. 
Especially if the parent had leading traits of any kind, 
will these be likely to retain the lead in the offspring. 

But the balance of the new organism must almost neces- 
sarily be gradually more or less disturbed. All the sur- 
roundings of the child — the whole range of foreign in- 
fluences as well as its innate sentient proclivities — will 
perpetually introduce new elements ; so that if an individ- 
ual should spring from one parent only, and if parent and 
child were originally exactly identical in sentient constitu- 
tion, they would, under the necessarily differing influences, 
develop unequally, and be still somewhat unlike in mind 
and body. Indeed, no one ever remains exactly like him- 



176 Coordinations of Growth. 

self from year to year, but is continually changing in man- 
ifestations while his real personality is yet unchanged. 

Again, both parents have their special unlike traits 
which, conjoined in action, influence the development of 
the new being. The new organism, from the first, is 
started under the auspices of differing and sometimes 
warring tendencies, harmonized like all compound motion, 
by a mutual change and interchange of the various modes 
of force. The result, therefore, must be as we find it in 
actual life, the differences and resemblances both real, but 
highly variable. There is a universally recognized family 
likeness, always controlled and overruled by a clearly de- 
fined personality, transcending all common traits, whether 
pertaining to the whole class or to immediate ancestry. 
The most variously accumulated scientific evidence alike 
adds to the proof that each sentient atom has a directive 
sentient constitution of its own, which not only uses and 
controls, but also originates whatever is special to itself in 
its own organism. 

Any mental or physical trait may be gradually accumu- 
lated by successive generations as a family heir-loom, or 
being accidentally acquired by either parent, may be repro- 
duced in their child, or passing one or more generations, it 
will sometimes reappear even in a remote descendant. 
All similar " freaks of nature," as they have been called, 
are satisfactorily explained on the hypotheses of the reflex 
influence of coordinated matter and mind, mutually per- 
petuating all joint processes, and therefore tending to 
maintain acquired peculiarities of whatever character. 
Here is a universal principle necessarily applied under 
varying conditions ; therefore the varying results. 

There is a natural tendency in every organism to cast 
off disease or imperfection, to recuperate and perfect itself. 
Organic processes are essentially renovating, improving 
processes — processes of perpetual new adaptations to 
perpetually new sentient needs ; and as disease is simply 



Coordinations of Growth. 177 

some form of disturbance to these natural processes, the 
organism must tend to right itself. Organic renovation is 
a physical necessity. Add to this the influence of mind, 
acting either spontaneously or deliberately ; and in either 
case stimulating and directing the renovating process, 
because acting under the universal law of all coordina- 
tions, which requires that all joint processes, taken in the 
largest sense, should be harmonious and working to the 
same end, which end is a real progress or advance ; and we 
see how mind and matter everywhere cooperate for the 
highest well-being of the sentient life. Is disease heredi- 
tary ? Nature, the universal physician, is far more heredi- 
tary still. Her treatment is unerring. We may cooperate 
with her \ but no sensible man will ever arraign her for 
malpractice ; for One wiser than she has instituted all her 
processes in beneficent harmony. Her treatment, too, is 
continuous, in sickness and in health, from the first to the • 
last organic act No room is left, therefore, for doubt that 
mind entering upon another life, will find nature — that 
is established beneficent coordinations — following him 
even on through endless existence. The established order 
of the universe is itself one perpetual curative process, ' 
ameliorating evil and increasing good forever. In a word, 
I repeat, that it is the universal law of all processes that 
they work together to the same end, to the perpetual in- 
crease of sentient experience, and to the highest good of 
sentient being. 

The lower the type of life, the more gregarious and 
dependent seem to be its organic functions, The corals 
and hydras, like plants, grow in a common organism 
branching out tree-like \ new individuals springing from a 
common ancestor, and either remaining permanently fixed 
in the organic community, or dropping off to become in 
turn the progenitors of a new colony. Social ties may 
well rival personal endowments, with either the lowest 
polyp or the most exalted man. The little bud may be 



178 Coordinations of Growth. 

organically dependent for all its sentient good, which is 
doubtless as feeble as its own helplessness ; but man, in 
the multitude of his resources, is in reality no less depend- 
ent on others for his enjoyment. Plants and the lower 
animals propagate their kind by various and superficially 
unlike processes. A distinguished botanist * says, " It may 
be laid down as a pretty general rule, that the less seed a 
plant ripens, the more it becomes multiplied by buds, and 
vice versa" 

Probably a similar law exists in regard to those animals 
which are propagated both by budding and by self-divis- 
ion, or " fissigemmation." It is perfectly certain that 
an established order of increase exists among all ranks of 
beings, and that this order has been established in wisdom 
and beneficence. The lower the type of organism, of 
course the more helpless, the more directly dependent 
the indwelling life, and the broader therefore should be 
the range of conditions under which it may exist. This 
law of natural compensations will be found to be a very 
general if not a universal principle. Numbers of the 
lowest animals give birth to many millions of offspring 
in a single season. The Amoeba and Hydra may, it is 
asserted, be divided into minute pieces, and yet each piece 
will form all the missing parts again and become itself a 
perfect animal. Normal self-division also takes place in 
different animals at all stages of growth, even before the 
formation of the egg ; and many eggs regularly divide 
into two, four, eight, or even twelve and sixteen perfect 
individuals according to the species, as in the Natica or 
sea snail, which, according to Professor Agassiz, divides 
into eight or sixteen, or in some varieties twelve parts, 
each becoming a perfect animal. Adult hydroids and 
worms also, self-divide after a very curious but carefully 
established programme, which evidently has been devised 
and is .executed with the utmost precision. The season 
J Schleiden. 



Coordinations of Growth, 179 

of the year and various other external conditions affect 
the normal processes of growth, so that the offspring of 
the same parent may take one form in the spring, and 
another in the autumn, or it may be perfecting two sets of 
offspring at the same time : the one to remain permanently 
on the parent stock, and the other to float out into the 
world independently, to seek its fortune and establish new 
conditions for its posterity. We are daily learning that 
there are more things in heaven and earth than men have 
dreamed of hitherto. Some of the normal modes of 
growth might strike one at first sight as highly eccentric. 
They certainly would have been regarded as extremely 
improbable if we had been called to reason upon them in 
advance, but being necessitated to accept them as facts, we 
are enabled to find a general unity of thought — a com- 
mon plan with simply a good deal of variety in the details 
of its execution, according to the varying conditions under 
which it was intended to be executed. One of the well- 
known illustrations of peculiar modes of growth is that of 
the transformations in insect phenomena \ but if, with our 
great naturalists, we can generalize sufficiently to perceive 
that all creatures undergo some analogous transformation ; 
each always after the type of its own class, and manifested 
at different stages of development; but real transforma- 
tions from a lower to a higher grade of organism, we shall 
still find unity of plan everywhere, even to the minutest 
details. 

The plant organism, generally lower in the plane of life 
than the animal, is also more prolific and may be propa- 
gated by even more various modes. Cuttings may be set 
directly in the earth or grafted into any kindred stock, 
while every vegetable bud is susceptible of becoming the 
beginning of a new plant of its kind, with its countless 
numbers of possibly self-sustaining buds. Schleiden even 
asserts that " the power is given to all plants, to develop 
new plants out of any of their cells, when they come to be 



180 Coordinations of Growth. 

placed in favorable circumstances." 1 Possibly; but hy- 
pothesis is not necessarily fact ; no vegetable structure of 
a high type has ever been developed except by the normal 
processes of buds and seeds, produced by the action of 
legitimate functions. Among some of the lower plants 
there seems almost no limit to reproduction ; and, as 
there are those whose whole organism is confined to a 
single cell, who shall say that there are not also compound 
organisms in which every cell represents its separate indi- 
vidual life. 

Rapidity of growth in these types is as remarkable as 
their productiveness. It has been estimated that in the 
fungus Bovista gigantea, 20,000 new cells are formed every 
minute. The maggots of flesh flies, whose increase in 
numbers is almost limitless, have also been found to in- 
crease in size about 200 times in one day ; but both 
these types are simply reorganizing already digested mate- 
rials. There is certainly some relation between rapidity 
of growth and facility for propagation, and both character- 
istics belong often to the parasitic tribes, and very gen- 
erally to low and dependent organisms. Thus plants do 
propagate in ways which seem to be quite abnormal, but 
which, doubtless, are as really legitimate as any other. 
" If, for example, a leaf of Bryophyllum calycinum is 
placed upon moist earth, young plants are developed from 
all the indentations of the leaf, and these can only derive 
their existence from the extraordinary development of cer- 
tain appointed cells. The same phenomenon occurs on 
broken surfaces of detached leaves of the beautiful scarlet 
flowered Echeverias, and in many other succulent plants, 
as also in the orange-tree." * " If a notch is made in one 
of the thick veins of the splendid Gesneria, a new young 
plant is produced on the broken surface in about a week." 

But because some plants may be propagated by these 
somewhat unique methods, it is surely no more legitimate 
1 The Plant. 



Coordinations of Growth. 181 

to infer therefore that every plant-cell may be made to 
originate a new organism, if " placed in favorable circum- 
stances," than it is to infer that every organic cell, vege- 
table or animal, if placed in favorable conditions could be 
made to originate an independent organism. The hypoth- 
esis is a material one, and originates from a wholly mate- 
rial theory of development. Suppose one cell from the 
human heart, another from the brain, and another from the 
great toe could be each developed into a distinct organ- 
ism, on this theory should it be in each instance a human 
organism, or should the one grow up into a gigantic heart, 
another to a powerful brain, and the third to one immense 
great toe ? Every cell of a simple, yet many celled organ- 
ism, with its several organs under the control of one sen- 
tient life, cannot, in the nature of things, become itself 
the centre of a distinct organism. 

The whole range of appetencies and capacities acting 
through their appropriate organs are called into coopera- 
tion at the initiation of a new life. Imbecile and besotted 
parents too often beget children like themselves, because 
all their nobler energies being dormant, the latent tenden- 
cies of the new being are not therefore aroused and set in 
progress in connection with an adapted organism. It is 
easy to force the leaf-bud of a tree into bearing fruit, or 
to stimulate a branch to become a root ; because all the 
functions of a tree are essentially one, contributing as com- 
mon organs to many kindred sentient lives, with but little 
varying experience. The several parts of a plant are all 
found to be simply transformations of each other ; the plant 
mind can be pushed into this or that form by external con- 
ditions \ but the several organs in every simple organism 
are the direct outgrowth of various special appetencies — 
all pertaining to one mind. Therefore the higher the type 
of life, the more nicely adjusted are all the many coordi- 
nations needful to its development. No one organic cell, 
not even the proper germ-cells, can develop the new organ- 



j 82 Coordinations of Growth. 

ism. It develops itself through the aid of the organism 
generally; it needs only to get the right conditions for 
starting ; therefore, if its nature is feeble and almost uni- 
form in sentient properties, the more easy are the terms 
of growth. A jelly-fish, but little higher than "an organ- 
ized drop of water," may bud out almost anywhere into a 
new being, and so if the thick vein of the Gesneria is 
wounded, nature will surely rally to the breach ; but 
instead of simply mending the hurt, as with us, she pieces 
on instead a new little Gesneria — all the conditions for 
its simple growth and prosperity being abundantly sup- 
plied. 

A specimen of Levisia rediviva, collected in Western 
North America by Dr. Lyall, of the British Navy, on the 
authority of " Silliman's Journal," was " immersed in boil- 
ing water " before drying and pressing it, in order to stop its 
growing propensity, " and yet more than a year and a half 
afterwards it showed symptoms of vitality, and in May of 
1863, it produced its beautiful flowers in the Royal Gar- 
dens of Kew." Such facts only indicate the wide range 
of conditions adapted to organic growth — the growth 
itself is one and simple, conducted after a uniform type, 
whether in the growing or the already matured structure. 

Professor Clark of Harvard, thus describes a process 
of growth to which he was an eye-witness. A Flat-worm 
or Planaria was cut in two with a sharp knife. "The 
restored organs were not formed all at once, but gradually, 
as it were bit by bit, in this wise : From the anterior half 
a point insensibly budded out at the cut end, and within 
this projection a clear spot appeared, which eventually 
proved to be the retiring chamber, or sheath of the pro- 
boscis when retracted within the body ; next the probos- 
cis, with a gradually defining outline, made itself apparent, 
and at the same time irregular branching cavities became 
visible in the surrounding new tissue, and as they grew 



Coordinations of Growth. 183 

more distinct they could be traced along forward to the 
old branches of the intestine." l 

This mode of growth, " bit by bit," is uniform with all 
organizations. Thus it is that organic functions every- 
where, whether in repair or in original growth, coordinate 
inorganic matter ; but the whole organism is cooperative 
in the process. The raw material is not immediately in- 
troduced at the point of growth, but is first variously modi- 
fied and prepared for its special organic functions, through 
the influence of many coordinated simultaneous processes : 
conducted through the intervention of the whole adapted 
organism ; each organ and each cell even, promptly re- 
sponding in the performance of its own specific work. 
1 Mind in Nature, p. 93. 




DIFFERENT TYPES OF MIND. 

PENTIENT properties are evidently common to all 
animals, and there is no reason to suppose that 
they are not common also to all plants, while 
there are many reasons for presuming that all organic pro- 
cesses are conducted under the direct influence of some 
quality of sentient stimulus. We know by experience that 
appetencies are the direct stimuli to those processes in our 
own organisms which result not only in perpetual renova- 
tion but in general frequent activity; and as these pro- 
cesses are closely paralleled in the animal and vegetable 
kingdoms, we must presume therefore that analogous appe- 
tencies stimulate all organic operations. In brief, I main- 
tain that the general quality of sentience is the only real 
and distinctive organic force — that it is the only mode of 
force which distinguishes between organic and inorganic 
processes. 

Wherever the quality of sentience exists as a present 
and active property, there is organization. The sentience, 
whether acting spontaneously or reflectively, stimulates 
and directs the process which eventuates in the formation 
of the coordinated organ ; but wherever the process is 
wholly unsentient, no organization is formed, but the prod- 
uct of the process is homogeneous or inorganic. If this 
is true, then the character of the organism must be indic- 
ative of the indwelling sentient nature, and vice versa. It 
may even be possible, by studying and comparing their 
joint manifestations, by comparing the different types with 
each other, and by bringing everything into the light of 
our own experience and there carefully weighing resem- 



Different Types of Mind. 185 

blances and differences, to form some tolerably adequate 
idea of the natures of sentient beings very widely removed 
from ourselves, and agreeing only in possessing the one 
fundamental element of sentient or living properties. 

A shaded house-plant reaches toward the light as if with 
a felt yearning after its needed treasures ; the roots of 
a tree penetrate to almost incredible distances and past 
untold obstacles in search of coveted water and necessary 
food, when these are not more readily supplied. What but 
vegetable sentience, but real and positive sensations, can 
impel the organic growth in exactly the needed directions? 
The whole tone of vigor and thrift which comes to a well- 
established vegetable is at least wonderfully suggestive of 
a condition of placid content ; while the faded, drooping, 
withered state of a starved or wounded plant is even pain- 
fully indicative of discomfort. It is strangely like this that 
we look when we are well or ill cared for, and enjoy 01 
suffer accordingly. Now that humanity is waking up to 
" the rights of animals," it may be well to widen our ban- 
ner still further and write upon it, " The rights even of 
plants — the rights of every living thing I " for life is sen- 
tience. I, for one, can no more doubt it than I can doubt 
that I myself suffer and enjoy, because I live. 

The vegetable, like the animal, has its periodic seasons 
of normal activity alternating with rest. Animals, with 
more of locomotion and self-help, are more dependent on 
their own exertions for a supply of food and other necessa- 
ries. Their periods of active appetency and satiety, there- 
fore, though ever alternating, are subordinated to their 
varying conditions ; but the vegetable, for whose fewer 
wants there is a much broader supply, is generally found to 
be steadily drawing upon some of its supplies by day, and 
habitually abstaining at night, when its cooperative organ- 
ism still works on mechanically, precisely as ours does 
in sleep ; digesting the food, building up the organism, 
and throwing off the disorganized matter for which it has 



1 86 Different Types of Mind. 

no farther need. The sleep of plants is not a fancy, but an 
accepted reality. The botanist Linnaeus first discovered 
the fact. He was, it is said, searching for some flowers 
upon a lotus, and not being able to find them, supposed at 
first that they had been gathered ; but as they reappeared 
the next day and disappeared again at night, he went out 
with a light examining his plant with care, and found that 
the leaflets had approached each other, concealing the 
flower from view. The appearance of everything in the 
garden was changed ■ and so he learned that his beloved 
plants had fallen asleep. Some of the processes of the 
plant are quite reversed during sleep. While in the day- 
light they absorb carbon and exhale oxygen, in the night 
this action is reversed. There are also some night-wak- 
ing plants, like night- waking animals ; and plants can be 
kept awake at night by artificial light precisely as in the 
case of animals. 1 

The dormant state of plants in winter is also closely 
analogous to hybernation, though there is a much larger 
class of deciduous trees than of hybernating animals. In 
both cases the normal functions are much more nearly sus- 
pended than in sleep, and in the dormant organism it is 
not the sentient activities alone which are more or less sus- 
pended, but all processes in general are greatly retarded — 
held in abeyance by the state of the temperature at the 
time ; so that both dormant plants and animals can be 
kept in an active state under the influence of the tropical 
sun. 

If life is sentience and sleep the suspension of sentient 
activity, — being partial or complete according to circum- 
stances, — then the periodical sleep of plants would indi- 
cate the existence of sentient activity with its constitu- 
tional need of rest, need of time for recuperating the or- 
gans which administer to the living experience. I have 
already tried to show that this is the true theory of sleep — 
i De Candolle. 



Different Types of Mind. 1S7 

that it is the mind and not the body which rests, and that 
in disturbed states of slumber it is usually those modes of 
mind acted upon by external conditions which are wakeful. 
These are questions of fact which every one must test by 
his own experience ; but whatever be the nature of sleep, 
it presents analogous phenomena in connection with all 
living organisms. 

In a deep sleep, many things may be done to the body 
of which the mind is quite unconscious. A child is often 
carried from place to place and dressed or undressed with- 
out awaking ; and many things may be done to an adult 
person of which he has no distinct consciousness, and of- 
ten, apparently, no consciousness whatever. This sentient 
life is not usually, perhaps never, wholly suspended ; but it 
remains either simply responsive to external events or it 
seems to retire into the internal chambers of being and 
resolve itself into a sense of rest, of passive content. The 
sensibility of the plant, also, seems to retire within itself \ 
so that the leaves of the sensitive plant, for the time, lose 
their peculiar sensibility, which is still found to be active 
in the petiole. Whatever vitality consists in, then, it is 
seen that it is the vital phenomena which are more or less 
suspended in sleep. 

Who shall say, in the face of facts like these, that there 
is not positive sentience connected with the existence of 
even the vegetable ? When growing in a good soil, under 
favorable conditions, why should it not have some pletho- 
ric sense of the delights of the epicure ? Basking in the 
sunshine may be as agreeable to the opening bud as to the 
little human child. These things are good in themselves, 
and why should not even these primitive forms of good be 
multiplied to their fullest extent ? He who created good of 
all qualities, who established sentient experience with its 
joys as well as its sorrows, has taken excellent care that 
the plant, possessing but little or no volition, shall be able 
to find its appropriate satisfactions \ while very little suf- 



1 88 Different Types of Mind. 

fering, apparently, can be inflicted on it. When wounded, 
it heals amain ; are branches lopped from the tree, it is but 
a mode of easy, early death to some members of the fam- 
ily, while the instinctive esprit de corps of the whole com- 
munity rallies in sympathy, thus converting the loss of the 
few into the gain of the many. Defenseless and dependent 
as the plant seems, yet its wants are coordinated with the 
most ample sources of supply. It can feed freely on inor- 
ganic matter, and on the decay of other organisms ; it is 
nourished by ever recurring showers, by daily sunshine, 
and an unfailing atmosphere ; and even if, by untoward 
circumstances, it be casually stinted in some needed sup- 
ply, the privation seems to affect it rather as a negative 
loss of good than as positive evil. 

Vegetation, in general, is so predominant a feature of 
nature's economy, it is so coordinated alike with the primi- 
tive inorganic elements upon which it alone can subsist, 
with the waste and outworn elements which higher organ- 
isms reject, and with these higher organisms themselves, to 
whom life itself would be an impossibility without the co- 
operation of these plant tissues, their humbler allies in the 
flesh, that we may well believe them to be humbler allies 
also in the spirit. The unity of plan running throughout 
all material details must surely indicate a like unity of plan 
extending sentient experience till it became as universal 
as organization itself. Why not? If good is good, the 
wider its latitude the better! Who doubts the general 
pleasures of a living existence — then is there poverty with 
the Creator that should hinder Him from bestowing it on 
the lichen and the potato-vine ? We have been accus- 
tomed arrogantly to assert our own immortality, but the 
mortality of every living thing besides ; and in the same 
spirit, while we could not deny sensation to the animal, we 
have contented ourselves by withholding it from the vegeta- 
ble. Have we yet to learn that if He paints every flower as 
carefully and as beautifully as He does the eyes and cheeks 



Different Types of Mind. 189 

of childhood, that if He rounds every leaf and twig with 
as appropriate and well-executed symmetry in its kind as 
that even in the human form itself; it is a gratuitous mis- 
trust of the universality of his beneficence to presume that 
it stops just short of bestowing the only thing which makes 
organization valuable ? Little wild plants, growing under 
the protecting shade of the forest trees, flowers peep- 
ing through the crevices of the roughest rocks, and all 
shrubs and trees generally, seem so admirably adapted to 
their own private niches and special localities, that one is 
irresistibly convinced that they are the cherished darlings 
of an unstinted Providence, which has lavished upon them 
an almost unperturbed serenity, and an ever renewed posi- 
tive enjoyment It takes nothing from ourselves if it be 
so ; but to them it is everything ! 

There are minds to whom all this will seem to be but a 
bewildered attempt at finding evidences to sustain a ridic- 
ulous theory ; but if they belong to the class who can go 
out on a June morning, after everything has been washed 
tenderly and cleanly by one of Nature's shower-baths — 
adjusted expressly for the highest benefit of her vegetable 
children — without being able to perceive the visible joy 
of every bud, blossom, and leaf, as it lifts itself to the sun- 
shine, to be dried and cherished by its warmth, and painted 
afresh in beauty by its light, I only pity him ! Is not 
science maintaining to-day that the planting of trees is the 
only method by which men can woo and win the showers 
of heaven to fall on the now barren deserts of the earth ? 
that the growth of abundant vegetation alone can insure 
to them the benefits of a moist and salubrious climate ? 
If more trees, then, are the only salvation of now famish- 
ing, cannibal Algeria, are trees themselves likely to be of 
utterly no account in God's social economy? Just as a 
wrong done to the lowest of our kind reacts to the hurt of 
the very highest ; so possibly we may yet come to under- 
stand that by the unchanging laws of cause and effect, a 



1 90 Different Types of Mind. 

deprivation of life to these the humblest of sentient exis- 
tences, must react to the detriment of all intermediate 
grades, up even to man himself. We find no looseness 
of adjustment among all the innumerable coordinations 
of the universe ; but everything, from the lowest to the 
highest, has been most definitely and systematically deter 
mined. 

The term mind, with the idea which it represents in our 
thoughts, has generally been restricted to the reflective or 
rational mind of man • but we have no word equally well 
adapted to comprehend all sentient personal life, as dis- 
tinguished from the unsentient impersonal existence of 
simply quantitative being. I have, therefore, extended 
the term to all sentient existence universally. It is no 
more derogatory to humanity that the mind of the perceiv- 
ing, reasoning, rejoicing, almost omnipotent man is placed 
in the general sentient class with the fishes of the sea and 
the grass under his feet, than that his majestic body with 
all its pliant beauty and utility, to which no other organ- 
ism can attain, is matured by precisely the same organic 
processes with theirs. A few years ago no one dreamed 
of that significant fact ! Now, thanks to Karl Ernst von 
Baer, science accepts it as beyond the possibility of doubt. 
We are only called on now to discover a still vaster order, 
and a yet more beneficent generalization in the Creative 
Plan! 

As each known element of simple matter has its own 
special properties — its own preestablished, unique modes 
of force and process, so each class of mind is apparently 
endowed with its own special sentient properties, its pre- 
established unique modes of appetency and activity. 
Mental science has been studied too unscientifically for 
me to attempt an exhaustive classification of even the 
most widely distinct types of mind. I can only indicate 
such unlike appetencies and capabilities as will be evident 



Different Types of Mind. 191 

to the most casual observer ; and endeavor to show that 
each distinctive group of sentient properties constitutes a 
definite sentient type of its own. 

One might suppose that there would probably be a wide 
unlikeness between vegetable and animal mental proper- 
ties, but, in point of fact, the gradations between them 
as manifested in their organisms, and in their habits gen- 
erally, are so insensible, that, at present, it is almost if not 
quite impossible to decide where the animal ends, and the 
vegetable begins. Some naturalists of high authority still 
believe in the existence of " plant-animals," or creatures 
having the characteristics of both kingdoms. Amongst 
all the higher orders, however, on either side of the line, 
the difference is very marked. 

No vegetable is known to eat animals as food ; while all 
animals subsist either upon vegetables or upon each other. 
Vegetables derive their subsistence either from the mineral 
kingdom, or from worn-out and decayed organisms which 
have fallen back into inorganic matter ; while animals, in 
order to carry on the operations necessary to their higher 
organic processes, must consume other organic tissues. 
The decomposed tissue will not answer. It must be eaten 
while still in its organic condition. It is as though the 
vegetables and lower animals were employed to wind up 
the mainspring of each organic cell, getting its little sys- 
tem of cooperative forces all in working order \ and, just 
at this point, that the higher animals, man inclusive, take 
the little organ into their own systems, readapting it with 
all its forces to their own more active and more compli- 
cated organisms. Here is a generic fact well established 
by physiology ; and I can only draw from it the inference, 
deduced also from general observation, namely, that the 
most various and most intense appetencies are coordinated 
with the most perfect and generally higher, more available 
organisms. The carnivorous animal manifests fiercer im- 
pulses and a more available strength for all emergen- 



192 Different Types of Mind. 

ties tnan the herbivorous one of equal or even greater 
size ; but strength and intensity of experience are not 
necessarily higher or even as high as the broader, more 
varied experiences of some of the more intelligent herbiv- 
ora. Nevertheless there is an apparently direct connec- 
tion between the nature of the food taken and of the 
organism into which it enters ; so that one has only to be 
informed as to the character of an animal's natural diet, 
and he is able at once to classify his general sentient prop- 
erties. If moreover a marble palace is better than a house 
of wood or brick, so an organism wrought out of already 
finely organized material should be comparatively better 
than one made of lower or coarser tissues. This theory 
may not be altogether in harmony with that of the strict 
vegetarians ; but neither can it lead to cannibalism, or the 
eating of anything more highly organized in the way of 
meats than a good tender-loin of beef, or possibly in these 
enlightened days, roti de cheval. 

There is an evident close connection between the appe- 
tency and the special food adapted to its uses. Most of 
the lower animals turn instinctively to the kind of food best 
adapted to their organisms ; while man, with his varied 
appetencies, finds his physical and mental well-being best 
promoted by a variety of nourishment. The best of each 
class, and a generous variety of widely unlike viands, are 
probably the fittest conditions for a refined and healthy 
body, subservient to an active, elevated, and well-balanced 
mind. The prize-fighter should doubtless keep very closely 
to his under-done beefsteak, and the mild philosopher or 
humanitarian, living on fruits and cereals, may find him- 
self best able to indulge in bright, clear, and placid states 
of mind ; but variety for the variety-worker, is the un- 
doubted law. There are but few animals who do not 
instinctively abstain from a repast upon the bodies of their 
own species. Probably the combination of forces in tis- 
sues too nearly like their own is not well adapted to their 



Different Types of Mind. 193 

purposes ; and coordinated appetencies advise them of 
this ; just as the seventy different species of insects, who 
subsist upon the oak, are all well apprised of the fact that 
the various oak-tissues are their legitimate diet. 

It is said that all herbivorous animals have strong social 
instincts. Many of them are almost as highly gregarious 
as the plant, in which there are universally many individ- 
uals cooperating in a common organism (at least where 
the organism rises higher than a single cell) ; but car- 
nivorous animals are highly unsocial, living often in the 
greatest isolation, as if their fierce appetencies were so 
intensely personal that they set them against every other 
creature, and every other creature against them. Thus do 
we find among organized beings a very wide variety of sen- 
tient manifestations with their coordinated habits and gen- 
eral outgrowth of results ; and everywhere the appetency 
and the organism are found to be closely cooperative. 

Plants, in general, are rooted to the particular locality 
in which they grow, and are, apparently, without the power 
of voluntary movement towards any perceived object, while 
animals in general are endowed with powers of motion and 
locomotion, which they can exercise at will in the search 
after objects correlated to their appetencies. Some excep- 
tions as to locomotion occur among animals aquatic in 
their residences. They are fixed to one spot like plants, 
or, being at first free, afterwards permanently locate ; but 
perpetual currents and other general agitations of the 
water, in connection with the voluntary motions of the 
little creatures themselves, are ample compensation to 
them for the absence of locomotion. A few plants, also, 
especially in their early stages of growth, move about in 
the water by the action of vibratile cilia or otherwise. All 
plants are freely stirred by the elements, many of them 
have a distinct power of what is apparently conscious and 
voluntary motion • but it is believed that there is no plant 
giving any sufficient indication of voluntary movement con- 
13 



194 Different Types of Mind. 

sciously directed towards an external object, I infer from 
this that plants have but a very small appetency for self- 
determined motion ; and probably no appetency for motion 
directed towards external things, which are either to be 
sought or avoided by conscious effort, while all animals 
have more or less appetency for motion of which locomo- 
tion is but one variety, impelled thereto both by their sub- 
jective impulse and by an objective perception of some- 
thing desirable to be either sought or avoided. 

Some facts stated by Mr. Darwin in his work " On the 
Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants," certainly go 
very far towards shaking one's faith in the position that 
plants have no objective perceptions, and consequently no 
power of voluntary movement directed towards external 
objects. He divides the movements of plants into two 
kinds : ist. Automatic, usually continued movements, not 
set in action by extraneous invitation — as the gyratory 
movement of the small leaflets of Desmodium Gyrans. 
2d. Movement in consequence of the contact or action of 
an extraneous body, as in the Sensitive Plant. Tendrils, 
he says, exhibit both kinds of movement, and they exercise 
a curious discrimination, coiling up into an open helix when 
lightly touched by a twig or a loop of thread, yet remain- 
ing impassive when the tendrils of different plants were 
dragged over each other even with much greater force, or 
when water was flirted over them, though it fell sometimes 
so violently that the whole tendril was moved. A still 
more striking fact I must give in the author's words : " I 
repeatedly saw that the revolving tendril (of Echinocystis 
/obata), though inclined during the greater part of its course 
at an angle of about 45 ° (in one case of only 37 ) above 
the horizon, in one part of its course stiffened and straight- 
ened itself from tip to base, and became nearly or quite 

vertical The tendril forms a very acute angle with 

the extremity of the shoot, which projects above the point 
where ifche tendril arises ; and the stiffening always occurred 



Different Types of Mind, 195 

as the tendril approached and had to pass, m its revolving 
course, the point of, — that is, the projecting extremity of 
the shoot. Unless the tendril had the power of thus act- 
ing, it would strike against the extremity of the shoot, and 
be arrested by it. As soon as all these branches of the 
tendrils began to stiffen themselves in this remarkable 
manner, as if by a process of turgescence, and to rise from 
an inclined into a vertical position, the revolving move- 
ment becomes more rapid ; and as soon as the tendril has 
succeeded in passing the extremity of the shoot, its revol- 
ving motion coinciding with that of gravity, often causes it 
to fall into its previous inclined position so quickly, that 
the end of the tendril could be distinctly seen traveling 
like the minute hand of a gigantic clock." Surely here 
are phenomena very like those which result from — not 
simple objective perception and choice merely — but from 
the highest reason, and a wise adaptation of means to 
ends ! Whether these phenomena can be satisfactorily 
explained on the theory that He who coordinated these 
wonderful results was able to effect them through the co- 
operation of quantitative forces with sentient properties 
wholly subjective, and therefore undiscriminating in their 
action, or otherwise, may admit of question ! One might 
gladly accord to some plants objective perception and 
choice, except that the admission, in this case, would 
prove so much as to be quite incredible. So high an order 
of intellect, pertaining to a being so dependent, and so 
unable to manifest it except in a single conjunction of cir- 
cumstances, would lead us rather to suppose that in this 
conjunction of circumstances the action referred to is 
mainly effected through unsentient forces ; as in some of 
the almost equally marvelous phenomena of chemical and 
crystallogenic action. 

Plants reach upward to the light and downward to the 
needed food ; some of them shrink from your touch, or 
move in various ways, influenced by no visible external 



196 Different Types of Mind. 

cause ; but a class of sentient properties wholly subjective, 
the mere sensation of stimulating appetencies and of grati- 
fied content when they find a supply, would amply account 
for all these, and for the resulting plant organization. The 
very young child gropes for its food blindly, impelled by 
a like subjective appetency, long before it manifests the 
slightest discrimination as to what it seeks ; farther than 
as finding the preadapted supply, it instinctively takes it. 
We must conclude, therefore, that these wonderfully revol- 
ving tendrils, like the planets, involuntarily follow the laws 
of motion assigned them with such rigid mathematical 
precision. 

I should define the plant-mind as, a class of sentient ex- 
istence whose whole consciousness is subjective. The animal, 
on the contrary, belongs to a class of sentient existence 
whose consciousness is both subjective and objective. It 
possesses not only sentient appetencies and capabilities 
which enable it to suffer or enjoy, like the plant; but 
it is able, also, to perceive objects which are coordinated 
with itself and to exercise volition in the search or avoid- 
ance of them. 

If the sentient properties of plants do all resolve them- 
selves into sensations, and are so constituted that they 
can rise no higher than these, there seems no room here 
for memory. The plant may suffer or enjoy in the present, 
and it may go on with an endless repetition of its own 
proper sensations; thus accumulating experience indefi- 
nitely; but its consciousness would seem to be limited 
always to the eternal now. Helpless, without aspirations, 
or perhaps greatly higher possibilities than those pertain- 
ing to its present state, there is yet One who careth for it ! 

Nor is it necessary that we should look upon the prim- 
itive pleasures of a vegetable existence as of but little 
moment and scarcely worth possessing. Far from it! 
While a large part of even the human race yet prize sen- 
sation as their highest good, and, possessing many far 



Different Types of Mind. 197 

nobler appetencies, are yet content to neglect these and 
to live almost entirely in the momentary pleasures of 
sense, there is little need of extending pity or compassion 
to the vegetable ! Its sensations, with all their many varied 
modes, are not of so tangible a character that we with our 
present faculties are able to indicate them, or even to form 
any just conception of their special characteristics. We 
find something akin in one department of our own natures ; 
and yet so different, also, that we may as reasonably ex- 
pect to understand all the joys of a mind which has al- 
ready left its human organism and is existing in some new 
unknown condition, appropriate only to itself, as to com- 
prehend the distinctive pleasures of beings living, like the 
vegetables, in a compound organism, with all its possible, 
beautiful social compensations. What, except a most del- 
icate adjustment of various sentient modes, could cause 
one class of these equally subjective lives to organize the 
huge trees of California, and another the low vegetable 
moulds ; and yet others all the intermediate grades of veg- 
etable organization ? As each class works always after the 
type of its kind, thus producing its . special formative in- 
fluence upon its organism, we are as much bound to sup- 
pose that there are intrinsic differences in the qualities of 
sentient appetency as we are to accept the fact that the 
different characteristics of oxygen and carbon are the 
result of their unlike properties. If sentient force is the 
true organic force, and by the special quality of its ap- 
petencies influences the coordinated organs, determining 
the character of the organization generally, as I have else- 
where tried to show, then what nice distinctions and va- 
ried combinations of sentient experience must there be, 
even among plants ? What delicate shades of unlike sen- 
sations must be necessary in order to ultimate in oaks, 
pines, palms, ferns, and numerous other families with their 
varieties ! The several types of crystallization are indeed 
as distinctly marked, and yet these are admitted to be the 



198 Different Types of Mind. 

result of rigid mathematical law ; but the crystal has no 
organs ; it is essentially a homogeneous substance. How 
far special typical difference in plants may be effected by 
unsentient influences, it must be impossible in our igno- 
rance at present to determine ; but so far as the various 
types are distinctive in organic functions, so far must they 
be under the control of distinctive sentient influences. Or- 
gans must be adapted instruments to be used by the sen- 
tient mind ; but the special size and forms of these organs, 
so wonderfully illustrated in the different species of plants, 
may possibly be effected rather through quantitative than 
qualitative force. Yet the latter must also cooperate, 
however impossible it may be for us to work out the lim- 
its of its influence ; and I find it most probable that an 
organism so graceful in kind as an elm or a willow, must 
derive its grace from coordinated sentient appetencies, en- 
ergizing harmoniously within the myriads of little indwell- 
ing minds. Not even a stoic can doubt that the elegant, 
breezy happiness of a bird is real happiness, and that the 
little joyous soul has made to itself a body fitted to its 
own needs ; and I do not see that he can much more 
reasonably doubt that the self-poised enjoyment of the 
sturdy oak must be intrinsically different from that of the 
pliant, swaying willow. 

It would not be easy to point out the specific differences 
of feeling and general experience in a wiry, dark-eyed, 
dark-haired man, and another light-eyed, fair-haired, and 
softly rounded in every outline ; yet that there is a very 
wide diversity in their habitual sentient modes, we are all 
perfectly well aware. They must be as really unlike in 
the whole general tone of their sensations, both in kind 
and intension, as probably are a red pepper and a banana. 
While the dark man is overstocked with a fund of unrest- 
ing, narrow energy, either for his own comfort or for that 
of his neighbors, the other surrounds himself with an at- 
mosphere of placidness ; which is quieting not only to his 



Different Types of Mind. 199 

own nerves but also to those of everybody about him. I 
might indicate a dozen or two typical temperaments among 
even Anglo-Saxons \ while the different nations, and still 
more the various races, are unquestionably as mentally dis- 
similar as any dissimilarity of physical traits. The mind 
has a structure and coloring of its own, which influences 
its organic coordinations \ which everybody tacitly recog- 
nizes, and which every physiognomist or student of human 
nature is able to reduce to a more or less scientific basis. 
Phrenology is by no means a wholly baseless science ; 
though its professors undoubtedly may rely far more upon 
the general correlations between mind and body, than upon 
any special swellings in one brain as distinguished from an- 
other. Many physical traits may have a purely physical 
origin ; and these may be able even to react upon the mind, 
influencing its sensibilities in a marked degree. I like to 
think of our carefully nurtured garden flowers as taking 
on a deeper and broader tone of sensations with their 
deepened hues and broadened petals. Their better care, 
and more varied food, though wholly material causes, and 
designed by the gardener simply to build their bodies in 
richer beauty, almost certainly produce a commensurate 
variation of sentient enjoyment — not of permanent sen- 
tient modes. Do we not know that a horse fed on oats 
manifests a more full and vigorous enjoyment than one 
who is compelled to eat chaff and stale hay ? When we can 
feed the poor with the dainty diet of the sensible rich, we 
shall find their bodies, their brains, and the mind which 
uses them, elevated to a closer brotherhood. Ireland liv- 
ing on mush and potatoes must continue to be Ireland, im- 
provident and unskilled in self-direction. Human tissue 
built up from turnips must be cross-grained and watery. 
The mind which attempts to work through it, is at as great 
a disadvantage as the body of the laborer is who tills his 
half acre with an old pick and a worn-out hoe, compared 
with his landlord, with his beef-fed brain and his improved 



200 Different Types of Mind. 

implements. Practical reform may begin anywhere ; but it 
must end by applying nature's coordination of means and 
ends. 

Even color, the most variable organic characteristic, must 
possess a mental significance. The rich-hued pansies, 
tulips, and dahlias, I believe to be glowing with deeper, 
more various sensations than belong to their native stocks. 
Sensation is generally intensified in the tropics, while in 
the temperate zones vegetables mature slowly, and men 
become more reflective. There may yet be found to exist 
a direct relation between change of color in plants and 
animals, and change in the kind or activity of present sen- 
tient experiences. Since the various colored rays in the 
sunbeam move in different times and through unlike spaces, 
there must be a direct relation between color and the 
molecular activity of the colored body ; and as direct a 
connection must subsist also between the molecular activ- 
ity in the organism and the effects produced upon the in- 
dwelling mind. Of course if we can deny to plants a sen- 
tient nature altogether, we have settled the whole question ; 
but if they are endowed with living appetencies and capa- 
bilities which are worth possessing, and therefore which it 
was worth while for Beneficence to bestow upon them at 
all, then why should He not have created all the charm- 
ing differences of sensation which are naturally indicated 
by the diversity in their external dress ? Has He taken 
such unlimited pains with the very least detail of organic 
arrangement, grouping kindred features and correlating 
every part with every other, with a minuteness and beauty 
of adjustment which can only indicate a most cordial and 
interested love for the work ; and has He not been equal- 
ly careful as to all the nicest differences of coordinated 
sensations ? To affirm otherwise would be to assert that 
Beneficence has less love and appreciation of varied living 
•experiences, than of simple variations in structure, form, 
and color. 



Different Types of Mind. 201 

Agassiz, writing of the fertility of invention in varying 
even the same type, speaking of the Radiates says, they 
" Seem like the productions of one who handles his work 
with infinite ease and delight, taking pleasure in present- 
ing the same thought under a thousand different aspects. 
Some new cut of the plates, some slight change in their 
relative position, is constantly varying their outlines, from 
a closed-up cup to an open crown, from the long pear- 
shaped oval of the calyx in some, to its circular or square, 
or pentagonal form in others. An angle that is simple in 
one, projects by a fold of the surface and becomes a fluted 
column in another • a plate that was smooth but now has 
here a symmetrical figure upon it drawn in beaded lines ; 
the stem which is perfectly unbroken in one, except by the 
transverse divisions common to them all, in the next puts 
out feathery plumes at every transverse break. In some 
the plates of the stem are all rigid and firmly soldered to- 
gether ; in others they are articulated upon each other in 
such a manner as to give it the greatest flexibility, and 
allow the seeming flower to wave and bend upon its 
stalk." * The great naturalist was accustomed to amuse 
himself " by the introduction of some undescribed compli- 
cation," and seeking for it among the specimens at his 
command, he rarely failed to find it among some of these 
ever-changing forms. 

This evidence of working with a genuine artist's delight, 
is a feature which must very strongly impress every learner 
in nature's wonderful studio, but as His work is accom- 
plished, not like ours through the direct handling of our 
materials, but is effected by complex, preestablished pro- 
cesses, in which ten thousand forces are coordinated to 
produce the designed results, I shall not believe that the 
sublime satisfaction which He must have taken in elab- 
orating His scheme of vegetation was not wonderfully en- 
hanced by the pleasure of bringing every possible quality 
1 Methods of Study in Natural History, p. 222. 



202 Different Types of Mind. 

of sensation to exert its directive and cooperative influence 
in conjunction with unsentient forces. Shall one rob God 
of this highest prerogative of multiplying as many qualities 
and combinations of sentient experience, as of simple 
quantitative modes ? We talk of " the human form di- 
vine ; " but the living gem is how much better than the 
casket ! All the wealth, then, of vegetable form and color 
is as nothing to the richer wealth of forever uprising and 
increasing vegetable satisfaction. 

What folly to despise the sentient life even of a plant ! 
Would Deity have multiplied it so infinitely if it were so 
valueless as we have believed ? The world is beautiful 
this June day in its freshest garb of many tinted greens. 
Looking out from this elevated window, I can see many 
miles away, so that myriads and myriads of distinct vege- 
table organisms fall under my eye ; and in many of these 
there must exist myriads of distinct living minds. What 
incalculable numbers, then, fall under the glance of a 
single eye ! Was it worth while to give all these a sentient 
existence at all, and yet to make that sentience of so low 
a type as to be valueless to its possessor ? We have been 
told that the whole earth was fitted up expressly for man. 
So, no doubt, it was ; but it was also expressly fitted up for 
the little golden dandelion. Infinite resources require no 
stint or poverty anywhere. 

" Thou art as much His care, as if beside 
Nor man nor angel lived in heaven or earth : 
Thus sunbeams pour alike their glorious tide 
To light up worlds, or wake an insect's mirth." 

Among animals, sentient peculiarities are either more 
marked or more readily appreciable by us ; being more 
nearly akin to our own. The four (or five, if you group 
Protozoa as a separate class) grand divisions, are not more 
distinct in organic structure than in their manifestation of 
sentient properties. It would be a curious and perhaps 
profitable study to attempt to trace in detail the corre 



Different Types of Mind. 203 

spondences between the several types and their organisms ; 
but, besides requiring a very minute and practical knowl- 
edge of Zoology, even when fairly accomplished, it might 
prove uninteresting to the general reader. It must suf- 
fice to refer only to more general and notable facts. 

All animals, it is believed, give evidence of both sub- 
jective and objective appetencies — they evidently suffer 
hunger, and in general, manifest clear discrimination and 
volition in the search for food. Some of the micro- 
scopic Protozoa seem in their habits like infinitesimal 
tigers. All one-celled animals are chiefly distinguished 
from the one-celled vegetables by their evident discrimina- 
tion in the choice of food, and by the contractile and 
mobile organism adapted to that end. The fixed Polyps 
and Anemones are known to hunt for their prey, managing 
their tentacles very adroitly for that purpose. The possible 
exceptions, are some of those compound organisms, like 
the Portuguese Man-of-War, which are represented as com- 
posed of individuals possessing distinct functions — the 
food-gatherers being each provided with a lasso which it 
throws over its prey, after the manner of a Brazilian 
hunter \ leaving its prize, however, to be digested by an- 
other functional member for the benefit of the whole com- 
munity. This class of functional and special appetencies 
presents very curious manifestations of sentient phenom- 
ena. The organic community abounds both among plants 
and the lower animals, and in all such communities there 
is a more or less distinct division of labor among the indi- 
vidual members. This must imply, either difference in the 
original sentient constitution of the different individuals, 
or difference in the development of the various sentient 
modes possible to them all. The latter seems to me the 
more probable, as a general scheme of vegetation ; though 
exceptions to this rule may occur. It seems more natural 
to suppose that one or more individuals, so placed as to 
perform the functions of a leaf, with its corresponding sen- 



204 Different Types of Mind. 

tient life, under a different set of conditions could be 
developed into a fruit-bud, with all the differences implied 
in a quickened activity to a new group of coordinated 
experiences ; than that beings with intrinsically unlike 
sentient constitutions should ordinarily be found growing 
together in the same common organism. We find an 
analogous functional character existing not only among 
animals dwelling in one organism, but also among all free 
individuals who exist together in a community, as among 
bees, wasps, and ants. The working or nursing bees can 
be converted into the queen -mothers by a simple change 
of food and other conditions ; and we are forced to regard 
the whole class simply as undeveloped females. The 
appetencies developed by their ordinary condition, impel 
them to promote the well-being of the young offspring of 
the hive, and to the performance of a specific series of 
functional duties ; but a new set of external conditions, 
first quickening a different group of appetencies in the yet 
nascent mind, would change their organic development, 
and give them an apparently very unlike occupation as 
members of the community. 

Professor Steenstrup, the first expounder of the myste- 
ries of the alternation of generations, says : " The circum- 
stance of an animal giving birth to a progeny permanently 
dissimilar to its parent, but which itself produces a new 
generation, which either itself or in its offspring returns to 
the form of the parent, is a phenomenon not confined to a 
single class or series of animals \ the vertebrate class is 
the only one in which it has not yet been observed. It 
would consequently appear that there is something in- 
trinsic in this mode of development." Speaking of the 
Aphides, he says : " The propagation of these creatures 
through a series of generations has been already long 
known. In the spring, for instance, a generation is pro- 
duced from the ova, which grows and is metamorphosed, 
and without previous fertilization gives birth to a new gen- 



Different Types of Mind. 205 

eration, and this again to a third, and so on, for ten or 
twelve weeks ; so that in certain species even as many as 
nine such preliminary generations will have been observed ; 
but at last there always occurs a generation consisting of 
males and females, the former of which, after their meta- 
morphosis, are usually winged; fertilization and the de- 
positing of eggs takes place, and the long series of gen- 
erations recommences in the next year, and in the same 
order." Again he says, " It is peculiar to plants, and, as it 
were, their special characteristic, that the germ, the pri- 
mordial individual in the vegetation or seed, is competent 
to produce individuals which are again capable of produ- 
cing seeds or individuals of the primary form or that to 
which the plant owed its origin, only by the intervention 
of a whole series of generations. It is certainly the great 
triumph of Morphology, that it is able to show how the 
plant or tree (that colony of individuals arranged in ac- 
cordance with a simple vegetative principle or fundamen- 
tal law) unfolds itself, through a frequently long succession 
of generations, into individuals, becoming constantly more 
and more perfect, until, after the immediately precedent 
generation, it appears as calyx and corolla, with perfect 
male and female individuals, stamens and pistils (so that 
even in the vegetable kingdom the grosser hermaphrodi- 
tism does not obtain, which is still supposed to take place 
in the animal) ; and after the fructification brings forth 
seed, which again goes through the same course." Thus 
free individuals, and those growing in a common organism, 
are found among all the lower orders of creatures to con- 
duct themselves only as so many animated organs condu- 
cing to the common good of their community. This is a 
general and systematic arrangement from which, under 
ordinary conditions, there are no variations \ but which, 
under extraordinary circumstances, may be very widely 
varied, but always through definite and still very system- 
atic processes. The leaf-bud will normally produce but 



206 Different Types of Mind. 

its single sterile leaf on the parent stem, but it may be 
stimulated into a flower with its several distinct individ- 
uals, and these into fructifying new seed which shall begin 
the organic round afresh ; or the original leaf-bud, favor- 
ably planted in the earth or grafted on a young sapling, 
may itself become the parent organism from which are to 
spring myriads of successive buds, leaves, and fruit ; and 
the sapling, cut off from its normal career, must see all its 
possible progeny suppressed, while the foreign bud goes 
on producing seed after its own kind alone. 

My inference is that for sufficient reasons, which possi- 
bly may be inscrutable to us, most individuals of the low 
sentient types receive in this stage of being but a very 
partial and incomplete development — a mere functional 
development to which they are stimulated by the coopera- 
tive action of many others — of the whole allied fraternity 
in short ; but that there exist within them yet undeveloped 
appetencies which will doubtless be called into exercise in 
some other stage of their existence. Thus the sterile 
Aphides, wasps, bees, and all " neuters " generally, promp- 
ted by impelling appetencies, under better conditions may 
yet exercise their legitimate parental functions, and all 
other suppressed modes of activity which are legitimate to 
the sentient type to which they belong. How much they 
already share in all this through their social and coopera- 
tive natures we may not know \ but probably enough to 
quicken all their natural instincts in some partial degree. 
With the plant, or the polyp, I can believe that the whole 
fraternity may experience, without knowing why, a livelier 
joy when a new blossom matures its seed or a new medusa 
bud perfects itself, and breaks away with its fresh vigor to 
found its new colony. These higher culminating processes 
should rise to the climax of satisfaction in every member 
so closely cooperative in effecting its consummation. 

We have seen that each sentient being, however low or 
weak the character of his possible living experiences, must 



Different Types of Mind. 207 

yet, in the nature of things, be a persisting and essentially 
unchanging unit. All his experiences are his very own - 
but they may still arise within him at every successive 
change which affects the general organism ; and thus 
myriads of distinct living minds may be at the same mo- 
ment overfull of the same pleasant sensations, whenever 
any genial influence produces a desirable effect upon the 
organic structure. 

I return, then, from this seeming digression to the posi- 
tion assumed at its commencement, namely, that all animals 
evidence both subjective and objective appetencies — the 
animal in a compound organism, though not always mani- 
festing such appetencies in his individual or functional 
capacity, being supposed to participate to some degree in 
all the sensations legitimate to his kind, or at least in all 
those manifested by any member of the common organism. 
We may, therefore, practically treat this class of organisms 
as each a unit, though really composed of multitudes of 
distinct living existences ; but with their pleasures and 
pains so coordinated that they all suffer or enjoy together, 
and through the mediation of common organs. 

All animals will turn aside from an obstacle, or shun an 
approaching danger, and are evidently cognizant of their 
own interests ; but many animals evince no proper social 
appetencies, no care nor interest outside of organic needs, 
which may be regarded as personal needs. While they 
have objective perceptions and desires, as related to them- 
selves ; such as food, protection, or convenience to be 
sought, or danger or discomfort to be avoided, they evince 
no appetencies, no affections nor perceptions which are 
not strictly organic, and therefore in a large sense per- 
sonal. Such animals even manifest no proper sexual 
appetencies ; and while the multiplication of their kind, 
as with plants, may be accompanied by its appropriate 
satisfactions ; yet, as it is dependent neither upon their 
own perceptions nor volitions, they are no more con- 



208 Different Types of Mind. 

sciously concerned with reproduction than with organiza- 
tion in general. Their appetencies in each case must be 
spontaneously directive ; but they are not consciously so 
in the one instance any more than in the other. It may, 
perhaps, be a pleasant experience for the hydroids to 
undergo the variously repeated normal processes of con- 
striction and self-division through which their numbers are 
multiplied ; but if so, there is no volition or manifestation 
of any social affection connected with the process. Like 
the budding of a plant, if attended with any sentient expe- 
rience to the parent, it must be analogous to the general 
content which results from the well-being of the organism 
as a whole or from the exercise of any special function. 
Hence I infer that perception, and therefore volition, to 
this order of mind, pertains only to relations directly affect- 
ing itself ; and that it is constitutionally incapacitated for 
taking a social view of anything whatever. 

Another and higher class of animals possess appeten- 
cies not only both subjective and objective, but also both 
personal and social in their nature, and ultimating in a 
quality of satisfaction which has reference both to them- 
selves and to others. This last class must comprehend all 
the higher animals, man inclusive ; but it also embraces 
many whom we have been accustomed to regard as very 
low indeed in the scale of being. Every creature who 
manifests strong sexual, parental, or social instincts of any 
kind, by which it is voluntarily influenced, must evidently 
belong to this class, however insignificant he may seem in 
his general uses or in his organic structure. The common 
earwig, whom we have been taught so much to dislike, is 
said to set on her eggs, and to brood her young like a 
mother hen ; and I have myself seen her little family 
gathered about her with manifestations of not only mater- 
nal, but also of fraternal instincts. Agassiz describes the 
action of a Gordius or Horse-hair worm, which looked 
like " a little tangle of black sewing-silk." It was twisted 



Different Types of Mind. 209 

around a bundle of eggs " about the size of a coffee 
bean," from which it was forcibly detached. "Immedi- 
ately it moved towards the bundle of eggs, and, having 
reached it, began to sew itself through and through the 
little white mass, passing one end of its body through it, 
and then returning to make another stitch, as it were, till 
the eggs were completely entangled again in an intricate 
net- work of coils." This was a second time repeated ; 
and the third time the little mother tried unsuccessfully to 
bring some loose eggs into the fold. The same naturalist 
represents some of the fishes of the Amazon as fostering 
their young, and evincing social instincts higher than have 
usually been credited to their family. De Geer says that 
a field bug {Acanthosoma grised) conducts her thirty or 
forty young ones like a hen her chickens. The little ones 
follow her closely, and when she stops gather about her in 
a cluster. Bonnet threw the silken bag containing the 
eggs of an earth spider (Lycosa soccata) to an ant-lion, 
and she would have perished in its defense, but that he 
rescued her. She still remained immovable on the spot, 
as if disconsolate and heart-broken. That these creatures 
experience some emotion akin to parental instincts in our- 
selves, it is scarcely possible to doubt j and, at any rate, 
there is evidence of some quality of social appetencies 
which cannot be gainsaid. 

Many of these creatures, so intensely interested in their 
offspring that, like the ants, wasps, and spiders, they will 
suffer mutilation and death for them freely, seem yet to 
have absolutely no wider range of sympathies, and no in- 
terest in anything beyond their own class. They, many of 
them, possess but little practical skill ; they build no houses 
and lay up no provisions for the future, either for them- 
selves or their offspring : but, rising and widening from 
these primary social and intelligent instincts, there is man- 
ifested by others almost every conceivable quality of sen- 
tience. Many creatures have each a special class of in- 
14 



210 Different Types of Mind. 

stincts in which they are unrivaled, while yet they are defi- 
cient in all or most other directions. Thus the bird, the 
bee, the ant, the spider, the mole, the beaver, and multi- 
tudes of others, perhaps less well known, are each archi- 
tects of a higher order after their kind than even man 
himself. They each evidence an amount of intelligent 
discrimination and choice, both in the selection of means 
and in the adaptation of means to ends, which must at 
least be accounted for on some more satisfactory hypothe- 
sis than that involved in the very doubtful term, instinct. 

What is an instinct but a strong special appetency — a 
desire and a corresponding capability in the direction in- 
dicated ? It may be, as I have assumed that it is in the 
plant, a mere appetency for various sensations, which per- 
petually recur to it through an incessant action and reac- 
tion between its sentient nature and its unsentient organ- 
ism ; it may add to this an appetency for perceiving certain 
objective causes which affect its subjective states, and for 
choosing such objects as affect it favorably, and avoiding 
those which affect it unfavorably, as in the lowest animals, 
who seek food, protection, and personal comfort generally ; 
or instinct may widen into impersonal appetencies, which 
relate not merely to one's personal good, but to the good 
also of others more or less nearly related to one's self ; and 
it may rise by many and various degrees to a more distinctly 
intelligent apprehension of many contingent circumstances 
affecting various interests pertaining both to itself and 
others. The special proclivity which adapts an animal to 
the mode of life followed by all its kind may be either a 
wholly unthinking, simple feeling, or it may involve intel- 
ligence, thought, and discrimination in a greater or less 
degree ; from that in the simplest instinct which hunts for 
its prey, to the highest moral choice which is made be- 
tween right and wrong. 

Is man the only intellectual being ? What then is the 
bird, with all its intelligent, cunning skill, and its beautiful 



Different Types of Mind. 211 

domestic sympathies ? The spontaneous appetency for 
flight would be competent to develop wings by energizing 
in connection with the established coordinations adapted 
to that result ; but what system of wholly unthinking co- 
ordinations can enable a bird to select the particular stick 
or straw which will best answer its purposes in nest-build- 
ing? What, except intelligence of instinct, can enable 
each bird to build its nest after the general type adopted 
by its ancestors, and which is usually if not always that 
which is best suited to its own special needs ? 

In all inorganic processes, coordinated unsentient forces 
seem competent to produce the ordained results. Each 
force acts by mathematical rule, so that under the given 
conditions no other result is even possible ; but in nest- 
building there are selective processes requiring judgment, 
skill, free volition, and locomotion in the sentient worker, 
which, however widely they may differ from similar pro- 
cesses in ourselves, must yet bear to them at least some 
distant analogy. It is certain that new elements have 
arisen here which must be higher in quality than those of 
mere sensation. If it is true that there is no adjustment 
of unsentient forces by which stick and straw can arrange 
themselves into the nest of a bird, it is equally true that 
no adjustment of simple qualities of feeling, which are 
competent to produce vegetable organisms, can avail here 
to give the oriole, the water-ousel, and the goldfinch, the 
requisite intelligence and skill to build the typical nests of 
their respective kinsfolk, or to enable the eagle, the sand- 
swallow, and the meadow-lark to choose the proper local- 
ities for their various house-building. In the execution of 
his plans each bird is compelled to make comparisons, to 
exercise judgment and choice, and to appreciate the dis- 
tinct objects for which he exerts himself. He is capable 
of varying the usual programme in many different ways, 
often adapting his work to unusual conditions with almost 
inimitable skill. It is not at all true that every nest is ex- 



212 Different Types of Mind. 

actly like every other nest of its particular class, but on 
the contrary, each nest is specially adapted to its own loca- 
tion ; so that there is often as much intelligence manifested 
in the character of a robin's nest, considered in connection 
with its immediate surroundings, as there can be in a dis- 
tinctly Gothic or Grecian structure which has been design- 
edly modified to suit its special position. Birds, indeed, 
are never servile imitators, though they have a current 
reputation of being such, and of following as blindly in 
the ways of their ancestors as a shadow follows its sub- 
stance ; but there is really great originality both of thought 
and action discernible in almost every bird's nest. One 
whose attention has not been called to the subject before, 
must be surprised on passing through any grove or or- 
chard to perceive the considerable differences which exist 
in the different nests belonging even to the same species. 
Certainly all birds have the good taste never to combine 
incongruities of style in their house-building ; and they 
have also the instinct to perceive that the typical home- 
stead common to their ancestors, is also the best adapted 
to their own needs. 

Some adequate explanation must be found to account 
for results so remarkable as these. If instinct often works 
like intelligence, then why not suppose that instinct often 
is intelligent? Nothing less than real perceptions, dis- 
criminations, and choices, added to subjective appetencies, 
can account for the phenomena under consideration. Sen- 
sation and perception are conjoined in our ordinary expe- 
rience. When any object affects us through the senses we 
not only experience the appropriate sensation, but we also 
intuitively perceive the object itself — perceive something 
of its nature, its relations to ourselves, and its relations to 
other objects ; then if we find these coordinations of sen- 
tient activity in ourselves, why not presume that they exist 
also with less gifted natures ? If the bird evinces marvel- 
ous intelligence as to all the processes and conditions ap 



Different Types of Mind. 213 

propriate to its special needs, why presume then that it does 
not possess real intelligence, real intuitions, as to the nature 
of all these things ? All its notions seem clear and distinct 
as to the work which it has in hand, while everything which 
it undertakes is executed in a most admirable manner. It 
would seem that while we must admit that it possesses a 
real intellect, yet we must also concede that it is an intel- 
lect limited to a particular range of objects, and effective 
only in its own narrow department. While in its own 
range it seems almost perfect, and is certainly unsurpassed ; 
yet outside of its limited family interests, it apparently 
knows nothing and cares nothing. The various birds have 
their strong special appetencies, which lead to their vari- 
ous modes of search after food, to their manner of flight 
through the air, to procreation, house-building, incubation, 
migration, and all personal and social concomitants, but 
here, apparently, both their appetencies and capacities 
cease together ; while everything outside of their special 
bird-world seems utterly foreign to their natures. 

Then if they do possess such marked instincts as all 
must concede to them, is it not highly reasonable that 
there should be associated coextensive mental powers, 
specially adapted clearly to perceive just how best to sup- 
ply all their narrow but very imperative wants ? Since the 
whole life of the robin is bound up in his little personal 
and domestic relations, what good reason can there be 
against his being endowed with a mental constitution 
which is adequate to take a lucid and rational view of his 
own personal and related interests ? This is exactly what 
I maintain must have been done for him — judging from 
the evidences which he himself furnishes us by his whole 
general and special course of proceedings. If he furnishes 
no proof of either knowing or caring for anything beyond 
the concerns of himself and his own kith \ yet he is abun- 
dantly shrewd in providing ways and means for their 
welfare ; while he and all his are such jolly little inde- 



214 Different Types of Mind. 

pendent beings, so naive, graceful, and cheery under all 
reasonable circumstances, that it would be most ungracious 
to deny them so much acutely sharpened good sense as is 
coordinated with the skillful engineering of their various 
affairs. 

Let us once admit that special instincts are special ap- 
petencies coordinated with a special intellect ; which is real, 
clear, and positive within its own domain ; and which works 
according to laws and processes of its own as intelligently 
and efficiently for its possessor as does the most compre- 
hensive intellect in its wider department, and all difficulty 
as to the mode by which various instincts, so different in 
kind in various animals, are made to operate, at once van- 
ishes. The intelligent skill with which all these are able 
to repair disorders caused by accidents ; their fertility of 
resources and the real discrimination with which often in 
emergencies they invent means to ends, making use of un- 
usual and unexpected aids, has always been matter of 
astonishment for which there was no sufficient explanation 
in any current theory of instincts. Their palpable want 
of wit, also, in many instances where some feature of the 
matter in hand was just outside of the normal exercise of 
their powers, has been no less marvelous and mysterious. 
That they could do so much and yet should sometimes so 
signally fail, seemed incredible ; yet it becomes most cred- 
ible if we regard their natures as at once both most clearly 
and most narrowly defined by coordination with their lim- 
ited special appetencies. 

Another marked difference between their apprehensions 
and ours is, that while we learn most things slowly and by 
experience, they know everything, not by gradual intuition 
merely, but as a priori or self-evident truth, which is per- 
ceived as soon as it is presented. Thus the youngest bird 
will build its nest as skillfully as the most patriarchal, and 
there is no need that the parent bird should instruct his 
child in what he himself has learned by laborious study. 



Different Types of Mind. 2 1 5 

We also have certain a priori truths of which every human 
mind is readily cognizant. Exactly as the child perceives 
that two apples and two apples make four apples ; and 
that a fine apple is more desirable than a poor one ; so the 
robin may intuitively perceive that an apple-orchard is 
better suited for its purposes than a dark hemlock grove ; 
that one stick or straw or bit of wool would more nicely 
fill up the spaces in its nest than another ; and that an or- 
thodox robin's nest would better suit it than a tailor-bird's 
pocket of leaves. The young tailor-bird, also, may stitch 
his leaves together as cleverly as though he had tried a 
dozen times before, since impelled by his strong specific 
appetencies he is able directly to perceive in the concrete 
objects and conditions presented to him, exactly what is 
best suited to his own wants. Thus the eagle, the sand- 
swallow, and the meadow-lark, each is prompted from 
within to adopt the special scheme of life adapted to its 
species. With its appetencies impelling to this, are coor- 
dinated perceptions and resulting choices, so that its whole 
nature is harmonized to this typical scheme and its ac- 
complishment. Each several scheme has its own innate 
truths and first principles, which become the fundamental 
laws of the bird-thought. 

That there is a general bird-logic as certainly as there 
is a logic of human thought, can one seriously doubt 
when he invariably finds that all the races of birds are 
acting in conformity with it from the beginning? That 
their processes of intuitive reasoning, i. e., perception of 
resemblances and differences, with the conclusions in- 
volved, can extend beyond the concrete objects immedi- 
ately presented, is not probable ; but that somebody has 
established principles of bird-logic as unalterable as the 
principles of logic or mathematics which we perceive and 
apply to our affairs, and that each bird intuitively per- 
ceives and applies the principles adapted to himself and' 
his pursuits, as really as we perceive and apply those co- 



216 Different Types of Mind. 

ordinated with ours, I do not see who can disprove or even 
intelligently doubt! Still I do not look for a feathered 
Aristotle or Euclid, to become an expounder of the men- 
tal processes and theorems of this unique race of winged 
bipeds and songsters. Sufficient unto their warbling na- 
tures are the pleasant burdens laid upon them, and this is 
enough ! 

No one can deny that each of the higher animals has a 
sentient existence peculiar in a great degree to itself. We 
cannot ourselves share in its experiences, and can only 
perceive some of its special appetencies as manifested in 
action ; but if their peculiar instincts do not often relate 
feeling, intelligence, and will, how then shall we ade- 
quately explain them? And why should not sensibility, 
intellect, and executiveness, work in concert through the 
merely animal organism as really as in our own higher 
natures ? Why should not intelligence and volition in the 
animal be on a par with his admitted passions and sensa- 
tions ? We have always found analogous adapted coor- 
dinations in all other like things in nature. 

The most highly developed man does not possess in 
perfection the special accomplishments of any of th"e infe- 
rior creatures. The fewer the number of gifts, the more 
special are they often in their action ; the more intense, 
apparently, are the appetencies which impel to their exer- 
cise, and the more unerring are the coordinated percep- 
tions through which alone they can be accomplished. We 
ourselves, though certainly higher than the bee in sentient 
endowments, yet cannot move from point to point in uner- 
ring straight lines as she does ; and we cannot, without 
rule or compass to guide us, construct her waxen cells 
with every side and angle mathematically adjusted to 
every other. Mrs. Agassiz, in her "Journey in Brazil," 
has stated what is doubtless true, that many insects make 
their own bodies the measure which aids them in con- 
structing some of their amazingly accurate mathematical 



Different Types of Mind. 217 

fabrics, instancing the bee as an example of this ; but one 
has yet to be shown how the round softness of the bee 
can be a very accurate mould for her angular cell, so 
rigidly mathematical in all its proportions. I still prefer 
to believe that a wonderfully accurate intelligence is 
always at the helm, guiding all her occupations. How 
else shall we dispose of such facts as this given by M. 
Huber, known as one of the most conscientious of natural- 
ists. He is said to have put about a dozen humble-bees 
under a bell glass with a comb of about ten silken cocoons 
so unequal in height that they could not stand firmly. 
Affection for their young, led the bees to mount upon the 
cocoons to impart warmth to the inclosed little ones ; but 
the tottering of the comb making it impossible for them 
to stand in that position, two or three bees placed them- 
selves against the comb with heads down and fore feet on 
the table, while with their hind feet they pressed against 
the cone, keeping it from falling. This they continued for 
three days, occasionally relieving each other. By this 
time they had manufactured wax enough to be placed as 
supporting pillars against the cone \ and when these pil- 
lars were removed, they repeated the process till they 
could be again replaced. One would say that here were 
coordinated head and heart cooperative ; and yet multi- 
tudes of cases are given in which bees are the veriest 
blunderers conceivable ; showing that however acute their 
powers, they are yet wofully narrow in their operations. 

It must be perfectly certain, also, that all the marvelous 
operations which we ascribe to instinct are not the result 
of intelligent action or indeed of any sentient experience 
whatever ; for unsentient forces are cooperative here as 
elsewhere, effecting always their due share of results. 

It has already been indicated that the most unerring 
instinct is never quite infallible ; but that it often fails at 
points where we might presume it would be most accurate. 
Thus a bat, who in utter darkness can fly through a long 



2 1 8 Different Types of Mind. 

tunnel little more than large enough to admit his out- 
spread wings, without defiling himself with the pitch on 
its sides, is yet liable to miscalculate the movements of its 
prey; the mole, who knows how to build his subterra- 
nean palace with its convenient upper and lower corri- 
dors ; its ingenious small water pits or its adopted great 
reservoir, the neighboring pond ; its indispensable streets, 
tunneled higher or lower in the earth as is at the time best 
adapted to his vocation as highwayman ; yet does not 
know how to do better when he meets a comrade in one 
of his narrow passes, than either to back out before him, or 
else fight with him for right of way ; like two old-fashioned 
English noblemen on meeting with their unwieldly equi- 
pages in a narrow lane. Pierre Huber found that if he 
placed a caterpillar who makes a very complicated ham- 
mock, and who had completed its hammock to the sixth 
stage, in another hammock completed only to the third 
stage, that it would go on and complete this hammock 
also ; but when a caterpillar whose hammock was only 
completed to the third stage was put into one built up to 
the fifth stage, it became bewildered and would perhaps 
build the whole over again. So we see an ant sometimes 
toiling over a difficulty which it would be vastly easier to 
go around ; and multitudes of sharp-sighted insects flying 
in the face of danger when slightly confused. A bird will 
labor away in vain to thrust too long a stick through too 
small a space, when the slightest change in the position 
of things would remedy the whole difficulty. The sharp 
but narrow powers of these various beings must be not 
only especially liable to confusion by all sudden changes ; 
but also to be easily thrown off the track by something, 
which, however trifling, is yet outside the legitimate range 
of their capacities. This must inevitably result from the 
exceedingly limited scope of their perceptions ; admitting 
them to be, so far as they go, genuine intelligent percep- 
tions. The fact, then, that instinct, though generally 



Different Types of Mind. 219 

accurate, is by no means infallible, instead of being a 
difficulty in our way is simply a confirmation of the theory 
that every instinct implies intellectual capacities commen- 
surate with the appetencies involved. We have only to 
recollect how exceedingly nonplused some human beings 
become when there is but the slightest change made in 
something which they have been accustomed to do in a 
particular way, to find that it is quite credible for a mole 
or a bat to be similarly affected. I remember seeing a 
carpenter, who had an unusual reputation for ingenuity, 
standing in an attitude of the most dubious perplexity, 
trying in vain to understand the nature of some slight 
change required in a frame, which, according to his ideas, 
ought to be made only in a certain way. The clear pre- 
conception was most evidently in his way ; without this he 
would have been able to comprehend a much more diffi- 
cult task. I fancy that difficulties of a similar kind must 
beset the poor caterpillar, when she suddenly finds her 
house built up to an extent outstripping all her precon- 
ceived ideas ; whereas if she finds less done than she had 
supposed, she is better able to go back again and remedy 
the defect. 

The fact that one can see never so clearly in a certain 
direction does not at all necessitate his seeing clearly in 
other directions. On the contrary, with even human beings 
the reverse has been proverbially true. Only a few great 
minds have been remarkably gifted with very unlike 
powers ; but our geniuses are, or more especially were 
formerly, when general culture was less common than 
now, one-sided men, with clear visions only in the way of 
their vocations. Zerah Colburn, who could multiply by 
half a dozen figures at once, and who could at a glance 
take in whole groups of complicated numerical relations, 
as easily as most men can see that three and two make 
five, had no more insight than they in ordinary directions. 
He possessed simply a wonderful intuition into the nature 



220 Different Types of Mind. 

and relations of number, which was not only quite com- 
patible with his being altogether a medium man in other 
respects ; but which would even tend to make him so by 
simply diverting other modes of sentient force into the one 
predominant mode of mathematical perception. Nothing 
is more common — and one might add, generally more dis- 
agreeable — than men of one idea. Nothing but the exceed- 
ing importance or the infrequency of the idea can ever 
make it excusable among men, whose powers allow them 
an unlimited scope of thought and action ; but among 
those creatures whose natures are largely confined to pre- 
dominant instincts, whose feelings, thoughts, choices, and 
actions all centre about the one pivotal idea of their mental 
being, the case is different. They necessarily act chiefly 
from their personal stand-point ; while we, looking on from 
the outside, find in the whole arrangement an order, a 
variety, and a beneficence of thought which is beyond 
praise. 

It is sufficient evidence that the different instincts of 
animals are not simply results of a different order of 
development, that even the most highly developed, not 
excepting man himself, is yet inferior to every creature in 
its own particular sphere of action. The male of a silk- 
worm moth (Attacus paphid) who delights in flying a 
hundred miles without resting, or the bumble-bee (Botnbus 
subinterrnptus) out-flying a railway carriage going at the 
rate of twenty miles an hour, by keeping pace with it in a 
zigzag course, are not more superior to man in locomo- 
tive powers than are that same moth and bee in the unique 
mental appetencies which enable them each to follow their 
own special vocations with their usual eminent success. 
What amount of development could endow us with the 
keen scent of the dog, who can trace the step of his master 
over leagues of earth, and for days after he has passed 
by ? Yet all appetency, all sentient experience being men- 
tal and not physical, there must be some unknown quality 



Different Types of Mind. 221 

of sensation excited in the canine race, in some species 
particularly, which is as wholly removed from all our sen- 
sations as the canine or feline logic is removed from the 
laws of human thought. 

Each type of being is too unlike that of any other to 
make it probable that by any amount of development in his 
own line, one could, on the strength of this, emerge from 
the constitutional bounds assigned to his own class into the 
possession of other or higher appetencies. Doubtless each 
bee may be developed in all possible bee-wisdom, and 
may enjoy all the many varied experiences possible to the 
bee nature ; but can this take any of them a single step 
outside the circle of their own vocation ? When they have 
all learned and practiced all the highest arts of the whole 
community, will they yet be one whit better instructed in 
the art of weaving the spider's web ? Or will they know 
any more about her craft of entrapping flies ? No general 
culture is involved in the exercise of special instincts ; 
the little wisdom requisite for this is of so self-evident a 
kind that the youngest of its class seems to be as highly 
endowed with it as any of his elders, so that if he were to 
live forever exactly in his present condition, it is not prob- 
able that he could ever become greatly wiser than at first. 
Doubtless he must, like all other things, exist forever ; and 
therefore, like all other living things, he must live forever 
if his life is to ultimate in his highest good ; but if his 
constitutional appetencies continue essentially unchanged, 
as there is every indication that they both will and must, 
then his future life, though it may be more full and replete 
with experiences of its own class, must continue to be 
generically unchanged in character. Thus a plant would 
continue to possess the nature of a plant \ the bee would 
continue a bee, the bird a bird, the spider a spider, and 
the lion a lion forever ; just as literally as man must 
continue in the exercise of his human powers eternally. 
Their mental properties, like all other constitutional traits, 
are from the beginning. 



222 Different Types of Mind. 

A sentient nature like that which we have supposed to be 
assigned to the plant, conscious only of its own present 
states as pleasant or otherwise, is at least possible. Life 
to its possessor would always be a positive good, while ex- 
isting, as all vegetation now does, under conditions so gen- 
erally subservient to its needs ; while if its experiences 
could be made as varied and beautiful as the variety of co- 
ordinated circumstances indicate, life then to every plant 
must be an incalculable good. Perceptions and volitions 
relating to the external causes which conduce to their 
pleasure or pain, since they have little or no executive 
power by which to effect voluntary changes, when allied to 
such incapacities, would be not only superfluous, but mis- 
chievous ; and therefore, as they manifest neither perception 
nor will, but feeling only, we may justly suppose that they 
are endowed with feelings or sensations alone. To this 
type of life there could be perpetual personal conscious- 
ness in an endless present ; but probably without memory 
of any past or anticipation of any future. Such a being 
would be effectually shut up within itself, from the simple 
absence of any power or mode of sentient force which 
could take cognizance of anything beyond. Perceptions 
of the not-me could never arise from a consciousness of 
more acute or enlarged personal enjoyments, however 
varied and delightful these might become through im- 
proved conditions. 

That objective perception might be developed in some 
future condition is not indeed impossible ; though we find 
no present trace of its existence ; while in all types of an- 
imal life perception is everywhere conjoined with sensation ; 
so that to endow the vegetable at any time with perception, 
would rationally necessitate the accompanying volition 
and executiveness, without which all perception must be a 
curse ; and would be to convert the vegetable at once into 
an animal. Nothing in legitimate vegetable development 
can ever lead to such a result ; and I find not a shadow of 



Different Types of Mind. 223 

reason for supposing that it ever will or can be effected 
under the present constitution of things. On the contrary, 
the plant-mind seems generically distinct from the animal, 
and nothing has ever been known to change in its in- 
trinsic nature from the beginning. 

A sentient nature like that which we have assigned to 
animals dwelling in composite organisms, with both a sub- 
jective and objective nature, but probably conscious only of 
the me and of the objective world as related simply to it- 
self; yet experiencing all the sensations acquired through 
the common organism in its own personality, as really as 
though it were itself the only occupant of that organism, 
is also at least possible. 

It is again possible that there should be myriads of dis- 
tinct types of sentient being, each perfect and complete in 
itself; so that no one class could ever be merged into any 
other through any change of conditions or by any possible 
amount of development. This is the only hypothesis 
which will enable me satisfactorily to explain the facts of 
nature. To nature alone do I make my appeal for cor- 
roborative evidence of its truth ; for it is the facts which 
she alone can furnish that must substantiate or refute this 
hypothesis. 

I have spoken of the bird and the bee-logic, and the 
laws of canine and feline thought, as though there might 
be something in them antagonistic to those principles 
of things by which the human mind is governed in all 
its mental processes. Of course if there is one Author, 
and one comprehensive unity of plan, there can be no such 
antagonism ! The same mathematics must underlie all 
perceptions, whether of bird, bee, or man ; and the same 
first truth, that it is impossible for a thing both to be and 
not to be at the same time, must as much underlie the 
thought and action of the bird when it decides to build 
a nest, as that of the man when he concludes to build a 
house. I only mean that the bird intuitively both sees 



224 Different Types of Mind. 

and feels everything pertaining to its own scheme of life ; 
and is as mentally competent to pursue the course which 
will best conduce to its own good as it is to experience 
that good when it is attained ; aud that all its powers work 
together in harmony, exactly as they were coordinated to 
act. 

So far as the minds of animals work in the direction 
with man's, so far they always coincide. It is the spe- 
cialty of their differing vocations, and of everything con- 
joined therewith, which is impressive from the uniqueness 
which thus becomes inevitable to every distinct class of 
mental phenomena. 

Many animals have but few marked special instincts ; 
they are not artisans of any special class, like the bee or 
the beaver ; and frequently possess little or no mechanical 
skill or ingenuity \ and yet they manifest a general intelli- 
gence of a much higher order, and in various degrees 
much more nearly approaching to that possessed by man. 
Some of our domestic animals are illustrations of this 
class. 

The dog evidently dreams in his sleep, and, within cer- 
tain limits, thinks and remembers in his waking hours ; he 
compares objects, judges and chooses between them, and 
manifests unmistakable, even intense emotions of joy and 
sorrow ; and he also possesses some degree of moral sense; 
but all his powers seem to be correlated to tangible ob- 
jects and the effects which they produce upon him through 
the senses. He gives evidence of little if any perception 
of the abstract principles of things, rational or moral ; and 
apparently has not the dimmest perception or conception 
of the purely ideal. His associations and his reasoning 
seem always to be related to definite facts ; and it does not 
appear that either his reasoning or his moral sense can 
ever go farther than comparison or judgment as to things 
wholly in the concrete. Of course, therefore, there is no 
sense in which he can really be called a rational being, for 



Different Types of Mind. 225 

though he does sometimes make rational choices, he does 
this through a simple present perception of some differ- 
ence in the things chosen between ; instead of by a percep- 
tion, not of difference merely in things as related to himself, 
but a perception of the rational nature of the things 
chosen, and therefore of the rational grounds for such 
choice. Neither is he properly a moral being, since he has 
not mind enough to lay hold of any of the principles of 
morality ; for just as it requires a capacity which can lay 
hold of the rational principles of things to constitute a 
rational being, so it is requisite that there should be 
capacity which can understand the bearing of those princi- 
ples upon general well-being, to constitute a moral nature. 
Thus if a dog should bite his master he would manifest 
%.feeli7ig of guilt, just as he would show that he felt joyous 
or grateful at accepting a delightful bone ; while at the 
same time he seems entirely unable to comprehend the 
abstract rule, Dogs should not bite their masters, or to get 
any idea of the nature of right or wrong, or joy or grati- 
tude as principles. The feeling must of course be accom- 
panied by some perception of the thing felt ; but if the 
perception is wholly concrete, though it is not adequate to 
be called either a moral or a rational perception, yet, so 
far as it goes, it is akin to these. When a large dog 
refuses to fight with a small one, why not suppose that he 
really appreciates something of the intrinsic unfitness of 
the act ? Since the unfitness does exist in the nature of the 
things themselves, why may he not directly perceive it in 
them? A large mastiff, brought into- the presence of a 
troublesome small cur, sometimes manifests a great deal of 
self-respect, forbearance, and even a high nobility of char- 
acter. Thousands of well-authenticated facts show that 
most of the higher mammals, under the immediate stimu- 
lus of the occasion, are able, under severe provocation, to 
manifest appetencies for some of the nobtest virtues. They 
are compassionate, generous, forgiving, or magnanimous, as 
15 



226 Different Types of Mind. 

the occasion requires ; they manifest love or hate, arro- 
gance or humiliation, and many other impulses too often to 
allow room for doubt that their emotions are akin to ours, 
and that they possess intellectual appreciations commen- 
surate with their sensibilities. I need refer to but a single 
fact in illustration of my position. 

I once saw a cat, when suffering the pains of maternity, 
go to a lady who sat with her young child on her lap, and 
resting one fore-paw on the mother's knee, with the other 
pull restlessly at the infant's dress ; looking appealingly 
into the face of the startled woman, and calling to her in 
tones of unmistakable entreaty. It seems to me that no 
words could have said more plainly, " O, pity me ! pity 
and aid me ! By all the ties which bind you to your child, 
help me now in my anguish ! " Why might not this cat, 
seeing the mother and child, have intuitively felt and 
known enough of the relation to comprehend that here 
alone might she expect the fullest sympathy ? The poor 
creature had been caressed and petted by other members 
of the family who were present, while she had formed but 
little acquaintance with the lady and no personal attach- 
ment to her; and yet this appeal was to the mother only! 
It seemed to me, looking into these dumb but speaking 
eyes, that I could read in them a nature wonderfully akin 
to my own ; and that she realized that fact, at such a mo- 
ment, perhaps as vividly as I did. 

The patience and forbearance of cats generally towards 
children is proverbial ; and in this there is surely manifest 
some distinct appreciation of the weakness and innocence 
of childhood. 

Suffering is a quickener not of the sensibility alone, but 
also of all coordinated faculties. Many persons must be 
able to remember, either in the mute expression of an ani- 
mal's eye, or in the tones of his voice, some unmistakable 
appeal for aid or comfort in time of suffering or danger. 

The eye of a horse can ask for food ; and it can look 



Different Types of Mind. 227 

undoubted reproof or can flash with anger if it is withheld, 
or if in place of bread you give him a stone. There is a 
story told of a bird in Chicago (I think it was a robin) who 
was kept half famished in a darkened room, while a hand- 
organ played the same tune over and over in its hearing, 
till the bird, having nothing else to occupy its attention, 
learned to whistle the tune with the most astonishing per- 
fection. It is well known that trained animals are almost 
always taught the nearly incredible feats which they per- 
form, under the stimulus of some form of suffering ; but 
who can believe that they acquire these things through 
the mere force of habit. Is it not more reasonable to sup- 
pose that they have intellect enough, when thus forcibly 
concentrated upon the matter in hand, to aid them in mak- 
ing even the most preposterous acquirements. True, it is 
intellect coordinated only with the concrete fact. Feeling, 
intelligence, volition, all require the immediate presence of 
the object. 

No animal lower than man himself, it is believed, has 
ever been able to manifest the slightest positive apprecia- 
tion of purely abstract truth. If they possessed such ab- 
stract perception, notwithstanding their want of language- 
proper, which so distinguishes the human race from all 
others, they would surely discover some way of indicating 
this. Indeed, they would then invent language ; for all 
articulate and written language is simply the embodiment 
of the purely abstract qualities and relations of things, and 
all animals do find some language of their own in which 
to express their real thoughts and feelings, as they are called 
into exercise. All their looks, tones, gestures, and atti- 
tudes show whether they suffer or enjoy. We see that they 
perceive the forms of bodies ; that, in eating, they know just 
where to bite, making no mistakes by attempting to nibble 
at outlying corners which do not exist \ they appreciate 
the place of a body, can generally determine its location 
at a distance by the eye, and walk directly up to it ; and 



228 Different Types of Mind. 

they have a knowledge of color, sometimes showing their 
likes and dislikes in a remarkable manner. Thus while 
the stupidest swine will choose between a large pile of corn 
and a small one, not even the most learned pig has given 
the dimmest evidence of understanding the abstract rela- 
tions of numbers. " The mother hen cannot count," is the 
children's proverb. The loss of a few eggs or chickens 
more or less, makes no apparent difference in the parental 
happiness, provided others still remain ; but remove her 
last chicken and the maternal grief is vividly manifest. 
While animals indicate so well that they know whether a 
body is round, or square, or oblong, if they could compre- 
hend the nature of a circle, or a square, or any other fig- 
ure, they would certainly manage to let us know it ! though 
the fault, possibly, might lie somewhat with ourselves, so 
long as we can contentedly admit ourselves to be unable 
to classify or define the nature of their mental operations ; 
but indeed men have always given them credit for pos- 
sessing instinct, feeling, and intelligence of some remark- 
able and unique kind ; and they have never been credited 
with a proper rationality. 

It is not necessary to refer to the great sagacity of the 
elephant and his possibility of acquiring many remarkable 
accomplishments, or to attempt any further distinctions as 
to the different types of being ; though of course many of 
their diversities of gifts become more and more marked as 
we rise higher in the scale of being. But I cannot forbear 
remarking upon the rational symmetry of the different 
groups of appetencies ; considered each as a whole, dis- 
tinct in itself. Every animal possesses a general harmony 
in himself. He may be either a lion or a lamb ; but he is 
not found alternating from one nature to the other : not 
only is he always true to his hereditary instincts, but each 
phase of appetency is coordinated with every other and 
consistent with it. 

The general symmetry of the animal body indicates a 



Different Types of Mind. 229 

corresponding symmetry of the mind \ and we find with 
all races of beings that their looks and deeds are usually 
in close accord. For a sheep who is amiability done up 
in a fleece of softness, to snap and bite like a dog, would 
be incongruous ; or for a fox and a bear to exchange char- 
acters, each still retaining its present form, would be 
equally so. The race of serpents are undoubtedly very 
beautiful, yet the general prejudice against them is not at 
all mythological ; there is a stealthiness of nature exem- 
plified in their forms, movements, and habits generally 
which it is impossible to ignore ! Again the beautiful 
alertness and fleetness of a deer is manifested alike in his 
eye, and in his whole form and bearing. I will instance 
but one other example which may be found strikingly ver- 
ified in the family of monkeys. They are proverbially an 
imitative race, delighting in nothing more than mimicry of 
everything which comes under their notice. In looks and 
manners alike, they are so many whimsical, merry effigies 
of their betters ; and though there are other animals with 
a higher mental nature than these, no others are so com- 
pletely the apes of man. 

The ludicrous and even the ironical have their own 
pleasant uses ; and may sometimes be made to teach their 
own lessons under a merry guise. I have been at various 
times startled, repelled, and amused, by seeing miniature 
suggestive likenesses of the human face, looking out from 
the countenances of the meanest worms. No one can pos- 
sibly turn over an illustrated volume of natural history, go 
into a cabinet of stuffed specimens, or better still to any 
zoological gathering of the clans, without seeing in the 
curiously distorted features of many different grades of 
animals rather humiliating suggestions of kinsfolk many 
degrees removed. Nature undoubtedly has given many 
expressions to a genuine sense of humor \ for which almost 
every one finds some responsive appreciation in himself. 
My allusions to the birds have referred chiefly to the 



230 Different Types of Mind, 

graceful, pleasant types most closely associated with our 
civilization \ but He who coordinated all things, evidently 
was not one idead. Some of the bird- family have the queer- 
est faces j bearded, mustached, or somehow bedizened into 
quaint portraitures of human weaknesses, or their forms 
and attitudes express similar analogies ; teaching us that 
sedateness may sometimes be made subservient to fun. 
As we are the only beings who seem able to appreciate 
the correspondence, we may safely conclude it was in- 
tended that we should derive all possible benefit from the 
lesson. 

The placid cud-chewing of the kine, healthful and time- 
occupying as it is in itself, has always stood as a ludicrous 
caricature of the higher processes of reflective thought 
Our word ruminating indicates this idea, and, though of 
course it is easy to find plenty of fanciful analogies where- 
ever we look for them among the quaint similitudes of 
nature, yet one cannot help feeling that there is a stand- 
ing joke in this repetitive, bovine relish of dainty morsels, 
it is so good a parody of the egotistical element in thought 
processes. 

But if we are akin to all inferior sentient beings, we are 
yet almost infinitely removed from them all, by the pos- 
session of powers which must make us kindred also with 
even Deity himself! Man alone, among all of earth's 
inhabitants, gives evidence of intellectual comprehensive- 
ness enough to entitle him to be called a rational being — 
a being capable of perceiving the pure rational principles 
of things, both as established and operative in the physi- 
cal universe • and also as established and obligatory in the 
sentient or moral universe. Man alone, therefore, among 
them all, is a responsible moral agent ! The rational 
appetencies are all discernible in the youngest human 
child. Use, discipline, may develope them ; may accu- 
mulate new qualities of experience, varied feelings, per- 
ceptions of many objective realities, and one may thus 



Different Types of Mind. 2 3 1 

acquire breadth, strength, decision, and moral integrity ; 
but he has only developed and brought out the powers 
with which he was originally endowed. Man alone pos- 
sesses discriminations broad enough to enable him to dis- 
tinguish between the intrinsically right and wrong, the 
true and the false, the beautiful and the ugly ; and as his 
volitions and sensations are commensurate with his per- 
ceptions, he only can intelligently make his own and other 
lives more and more desirable, by a closer conformity with 
all established coordinations. He alone can enter upon 
a course of unlimited improvement — of unending prog- 
ress. 





AN ECLECTIC DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 

BT has been my aim to show, in each of the pre- 
ceding studies, not only that there is a prevailing 
order in all change ; but also that all the various 
processes of change have been so coordered or coordi- 
nated, that change generally is advance — that process in 
general eventuates in progress. Thus quantitative changes, 
involving continually new combinations of forces and con- 
ditions, produce more and more heterogeneity of com- 
pounds, and new states and conditions of the old ; even 
while the universal rule still holds good, that like elements 
under like conditions produce identical results. The con- 
ditions have been so adjusted to preordained ends, that 
new and higher forms, both inorganic and organic, have 
arisen from time to time ; so that the universe has been 
steadily carried forward from its first immature beginning 
to its present advanced stage of development \ while there 
is every indication that it is still destined to undergo an 
entirely systematic and definitely designed but unlimited 
progress. Each specific thing has progressed, and will 
doubtless continue to do so, by established processes pe- 
culiar to itself. Its progress also is unique — a progress 
strictly after its own kind. Thus all inorganic progress is 
like a perpetual spiral, where no new forces are introduced, 
but the old ones wind continually upwards and upwards ; 
producing other, more various, and more beautiful forms 
and states, each successively equal, quantitatively, to that 
of its predecessor ; but, as a whole, growing continually 
better and better adapted to the higher uses of sentient 
existence. 



An Eclectic Development Theory. 253 

I shall presume that it is admitted, by every well-in- 
formed mind, that the present systems of worlds have been 
produced through gradual processes from some primitive 
state of matter. It will be conceded, also, that the organic 
kingdom known to us upon this earth, has arisen by steady 
gradations • that while the first organic forms were of a very 
low order, every succeeding period has witnessed advance- 
ment in the prevalent organic types. We are led up at 
once, then, to the question: How were these different 
classes of beings introduced upon the earth? In what 
manner or by what process were they brought into actual 
existence ? We have been taught that, " God spake, and 
it was done ! " That hitherto has been answer enough ; 
but it is a solution which belongs to a period that sup- 
posed the earth to have been created from nothing ; and 
fully completed and equipped in six literal days. 

Did the Creator probably depart from the whole gradual, 
progressive plan of creation, to make up a full grown 
Adam and Eve directly from the " red earth ? " and has 
He, in a similar way, probably formed a mature first pair 
of every separate species, just at the time when it became 
desirable to introduce them upon the earth ? It has been 
my plan from the first, to hold as closely as might be to 
existing facts ; leaving both the past and the future as 
much out of view in our present studies, as is consistent 
with a comprehensive and tolerably complete view of what 
I conceive to be the general scheme of the universe ; as 
illustrated by the universe in its present working order. 
Therefore it will be undesirable to speculate largely as to 
the possible " Origin of Species ; " and yet the whole ques- 
tion is too fundamental in its character to be altogether 
overlooked. 

Judging by all analogies, Deity never does any of his 
work like an artisan ; taking part by part, and putting the 
whole together after the manner of a machine ; neither 
does He issue an arbitrary fiat which is straightway exe- 



234 An Eclectic Development Theory. 

cuted ; but, in every instance, so far as human observation 
has extended, and so far as all rational inference reaches, 
He does everything by gradual, rigidly mathematical pro- 
cesses — in organic phenomena influenced and directed, 
but not superseded or in the slightest degree set aside, by 
the added element of an endlessly varied sentience or 
living consciousness, taking part in some of the processes 
in question. This progressive mode of working, is so 
inherent a part of the whole scheme of things, that it 
becomes highly improbable that there is, or ever has been, 
the slightest exception anywhere. To suppose such an 
exception, seems to me like supposing that the whole 
grand order of things has been partially subverted. Un- 
less some adequate reason can be given for this, one can- 
not choose to suppose anything of the kind ; for looked at 
in this light, it becomes too absurd and even monstrous a 
theory to be for a moment entertained. 

We find that everything existing has now, and has had 
from the first, so far as we can know it, a definite and 
unchangeable constitution of its own. When we see a 
new compound we do not suppose a new creation ; but a 
new change in some of the old elements ; and when we 
see a new living being, even if it were a wholly new type 
of living beings, how could we any more infer a new 
creation, or even any really abnormal process cf develop- 
ment ? Every new organism grows essentially like every 
other, and every sentient being animating this organism 
manifests a nature of its own as radically unchangeable as 
is that of any inorganic substance. No circumstances, no 
development has ever been known to greatly change any 
sentient being, or any manifestation of sentient modes, so 
as to make it generically unlike that of its own type. The 
mere fact that mind was not always sentient, or at least 
that it does not remember always to have been sentient, 
and therefore, that this sentience or the memory of sen- 
tience in ourselves must have begun to be, proves nothing ; 



An Eclectic Development Theory. 235 

for it is admitted that these sentient modes are depend- 
ent upon conditions partly outside of themselves ; and 
that consciousness could no more exist in an atom, if it 
were isolated from all other substances, than water could 
exist if all the hydrogen, out of which water is in part 
made, were caused to exist in an uncombined state. The 
conscious state is eminently a state of process, and all 
mental process, in this stage of being at least, and prob- 
ably in all other stages of existence, is dependent upon 
the cooperation of matter, in order to its own proper 
activity — as every material atom is dependent also on 
other atoms. Every atom, whether mind or matter, has 
its own unchanging possible modes of action ; but it is 
dependent on social influences for the opportunity of exer- 
cising these modes, and this being a universal law, it is 
just as necessary that a mind should wait an opportunity 
for exercising its sentient modes, as that a hydrogen atom 
should wait its opportunity to combine with oxygen and 
become water. The great question is, does every sentient 
atom, like every unsentient one, possess a definite, fixed 
constitution, which admits of changing modes and condi- 
tions, but of no possible change in any of its inherent 
properties ? My appeal is directly to living beings them- 
selves ; and I find that it is not more certain that unsen- 
tient atoms possess all their properties intact than that 
sentient atoms do also. 

How, then, could a fish, or a monkey, ever become 
developed into a man ? The answer must of course be, 
they never could become so developed. The sentient life 
of these three types of being must be eternally distinct. 
Their properties are as generically unlike as are the prop- 
erties of lead, quicksilver, and gold. 

How, then, if we deny to man the right both to these 
humble progenitors as his proper ancestors, and also to 
the privilege of a special act of creation to usher in the 
first full grown Adam and Eve, could the human race, or 



236 An Eclectic Development Theory. 

indeed any of the higher races of animals, have obtained 
a foothold in the earth after it was prepared for their 
reception? The how of every new little life to-day has 
something of mystery clinging about it. Must there be a 
union of two specific cells, a sperm cell and a germ cell, 
before a new organism can begin as the joint product of 
the two ? or might every organic cell, under some possible 
circumstances, become the nucleus of a new organism ? 
The best informed naturalists differ in opinion on this 
subject. There are those who believe in the spontaneous 
generation of some of the lower orders of beings, even at 
the present day ; and they apparently originate such 
beings, producing them in sealed flasks, which have been 
exposed to so high a temperature, previously, that all pos- 
sible living germs are presumed to have been destroyed ; 
but, on the other hand, living things are known to inhabit 
hot springs at a temperature even of 200 F., 1 and glass 
and metal may be porous to infinitesimal beings, like 
some of the animalculae ; and so, in short, the powers of 
the human mind have not yet proved themselves adequate 
to settle the question of the origin of the first living being, 
and its organism • or of any living creature who has no 
parents of its own type to serve as the ordained medium 
for its introduction. We must necessarily infer, that when 
everything was prepared for the first sentient atom to 
begin its new phase of existence, — when the conditions 
under which it could become sentient were reached, — 
that then it began to live, and to develop its own inherent 
living constitution. 

Myriads of atoms, of like or similar mental types, may 
all have begun at once, under similar conditions \ and each 
thenceforward have gone on propagating its own species by 
the ordinary methods ; or, possibly, but a single pair of 
any class of parentless beginners may have first begun to 
live ; but in either case, we are compelled to assume that 

1 Sillimarfs yournal. 



An Eclectic Development Theory. 237 

both the mind and its organism must have gradually devel- 
oped and grown, each as it now does from the lowest begin- 
ning. There must have been a first sentient experience — 
probably some weak mode of sensation, excited by external 
influences ; this, reacting upon matter, must originate the 
first germ cell ; and thus, little by little, would the mind 
become developed after the type of its kind, while the cor- 
responding organism would be responsively inaugurated. 

We know as a matter of fact shown by the geological 
record, that the first organic beings were of a low order ; 
and judging by all circumstantial evidence within our 
reach, we should expect such only to be first originated. 
The only point which I am ready to insist upon is, that 
every living being, whether originated with or without 
parental intervention, must have begun to be, as a living 
or organic being, mentally, through a first se?itient expe- 
rience, and physically, through a first organic cell growth ; 
both of which were gradually added to by coordinated 
processes, which are and must have been intrinsically un- 
changed from the beginning. Whether any or all classes 
of beings first found the conditions under which they could 
begin to live, through the cooperation of simply unsentient 
forces, as we suppose the first must have done \ or whether, 
with the higher types of mind, these conditions are so 
nicely adjusted that not unsentient forces alone, but some 
proper sentient influence also, exercised by the parent, is 
necessary for the birth of the new being, is a matter of 
comparatively little importance ; and one which, perhaps, 
we may never be fully able to determine. To me, it seems, 
however, that the weight of evidence is largely in favor of 
the hypothesis, that all except the very lowest beings must 
have had their origin in connection with the reproductive 
functions of other living beings. There is sufficient grada- 
tion among the different species to make this highly prob- 
able — more probable than that each should have arisen, 
successively, directly from the womb of inorganic matter. 



238 An Eclectic Development Theory. 

The animal body, in ordinary growth, must be built up 
from the plant, or from other animal tissues ; if, therefore, 
the mature body cannot maintain its strength by drawing 
support from the mineral kingdom, it is hardly likely to 
have derived its whole original sustenance from that 
source ! I infer from this, that even the lowest animal 
species must have arisen, originally, from a vegetable 
matrix ; while many of the higher orders, certainly among 
the carnivora, were probably first nurtured by some other 
animal organism, sufficiently akin to its own to make such 
an origin at least possible. If each organism is the coor- 
dinated outgrowth from its own sentient mind, under what- 
ever conditions a mind first became sentient, it would yet 
build up a body adapted, in general, to its own needs. 
Undoubtedly, such a body would have, also, a great gen- 
eral conformity to that of the organism from whence it 
sprang ; but succeeding generations would approach more 
and more nearly to the ideal organism originally adapted 
to its own mental type ; so that in a very few generations, 
the new species may be fairly supposed to have assumed 
its own proper character. We see something akin to this 
in the gradual fading out of foreign, national peculiarities, 
in descendants, all of whose ancestors, with a single excep- 
tion, belonged to a kindred race. Thus the great grand- 
son of a black man becomes essentially a white, if all his 
other progenitors have belonged to the white race ; while 
the great grandchild of a white father has become a black, 
if all his other ancestors have been blacks. Therefore, if 
conditions were originally so coordinated, that the ances- 
tors of the race of lions were to arise from among the 
tigers ; provided each of these classes has a distinct mental 
constitution of its own, the descendants might be presumed 
to be distinctly lions, as early at least, as the third or fourth 
generation • while the mongrel, with the mind of a lion, 
still bearing the organic impress of the tiger, would 
speedily become extinct. The sudden introduction of a 



An Eclectic Development Theory. 239 

new species, or class of beings with no closely intermediate 
type between it and any known progenitor, would thus be 
satisfactorily explained ; and, taken in connection with the 
imperfect geological record, we should scarcely expect to 
find any trace of the few intermediate links, even if any 
such once existed between the old and the new species. 
Indeed, if such were found in rare instances, instead of 
proving that one animal is a gradually transformed out- 
growth of another, it would only illustrate the predomi- 
nance of native appetencies over the original material 
mould in which they began first to act. It is not impossi- 
ble, and scarcely improbable, that so many distinct, care- 
fully coordinated conditions were made necessary, in order 
to the ushering in of a wholly new species of beings, that 
when it once began to live, it would take on its own prop- 
er organism even from the womb of its foster parent ; 
though this would not, at a first glance, seem to be the 
plan most nearly accordant with other general processes. 

We find, in the present, that while every creature pro- 
duces seed after its kind, yet that there is a possible inter- 
mingling of varieties, and even of species ; and that new 
varieties and perhaps new species are introduced at the 
present day ; though it seems, that if left to themselves, all 
these would usually lapse back again to their original type. 
Most of these variations seem to me to be chiefly physical, 
or the result of changed physical conditions, as affecting 
the mental development, and thus, by simple reactionary 
influences, propagating the new order of development in 
the descendants. 

Very much has been written upon the wonderful changes 
produced in plants and animals even since the memory of 
man ; the inference being, that if variations so consider- 
able as these have so recently occurred, we may, there- 
fore, reasonably conclude that all beings are the lineal 
descendants of primitive organisms, gradually modified 
bv varying conditions and habits. To me this hypoth- 



240 An Eclectic Development Theory. 

esis expresses the real order of organic development ; but 
with the soul of the process wholly omitted. It states 
the grand principle of the orderly growth of species ; but 
with the proximate sentient cause of that order of growth 
left out. That every species has successively arisen from 
the matrix of radically differing species, is highly probable ; 
while that many very peculiar physical modifications may 
be superinduced by adapted processes has been again and 
again demonstrated. These two admissions, however, are 
quite distinct, and must not be confounded. The one is 
an inference. Such a scheme of lineal descent seems to 
be in accordance with all analogy ; it is more presumable 
that each class should have arisen from the womb of 
organic influences, than from that of merely inorganic 
coordinations ; but, in either case, so far as the mental 
nature of the new being is concerned, its material origin 
would not greatly affect its sentient development. In 
either case, its posterity would speedily take on the nature 
and development mental and material, originally adapted 
to its kind. 

Possibly it has been so prearranged that certain crosses 
between different species would be most favorable to the 
new third character ; the one parental influence neutralizing 
the other, thus enabling the new being readily to assume 
its own proper functions and development. Many pecul- 
iarities in the growth of known hybrids point in this direc- 
tion. Though such crosses are generally sterile, they are 
not always so ; and the exceptions might easily allow the 
origin of all existing types of being. Those hybrids, or 
their offspring, with which we are familiar, often revert to 
one or other of the original stocks ; yet if a distinct type 
of mind were to arise under a similar conjunction of in- 
fluences, it would naturally go on propagating seed after 
its kind. Existing hybrids, generally at least, must be 
regarded rather as the product of similar mental types 
physically widely modified, and thus influencing the cor- 



An Eclectic Development Theory. 241 

responding order of mental development in each of the 
two parents. We have no examples of a fertile cross 
between very widely different classes of beings ! The 
class of known hybrids merely indicates, that the advent 
of a really distinct type of mind might reasonably be pre- 
sumed to be promoted by the union of two third types ; 
from each of which it was itself intrinsically distinct, and 
yet no violation occur to nature's analogous processes of 
growth. The many acknowledged modes of reproduction, 
varying widely in detail, and yet all intrinsically one in 
principle, make this yet one other possible mode of develop- 
me7it only the more probable. If I had not already dwelt 
on the subject out of due proportion to other topics also 
treated of, it would be easy to adduce analogy after 
analog} 7 , to show that such a material beginning for all the 
different types of mind is altogether probable ; but as, 
after all, it must be conceded that there are, in the present 
state of science, no admitted facts which can fully establish 
its truth, I forbear further considerations on this point. 

But to return to the subject of the constantly recurring 
variations. These can be generally, if not always, shown 
to be simply material variations, with the commensurate 
influence which these produce on sentient development. 
Breeds of animals become larger or smaller, with or with- 
out horns or tails, more or less web-footed or winged, 
with some insignificant difference in their peculiar kind of 
outer covering, as hair, wool, or feathers ; or of this or 
that particular form or color, etc., etc. In plants, closely 
analogous improvements, variations, and hybridisms occur. 
With both classes the amounts of known variations, though 
very great in some instances, are believed to be originally 
always of this outward material kind, which might readily 
arise from the changes of material conditions, co-working 
with the continued action and reaction between the sen- 
tient nature and its organism. Darwin, in his work on 
Orchids, has attempted to prove that there is a wonderful 
16 



242 An Eclectic Development Theory. 

change in the form and functions of the various members 
of the orchid family, and that we can trace their present 
structure back to a simple original type, possessing its 
many distinct primitive organs ; but this being true, takes 
nothing from our present hypothesis. Orchids may have 
been removed from a likeness to their progenitors, simply 
by varying conditions ; but more probably they are a dis- 
tinct class of plants, endowed with other mental and phys- 
ical constitutions ; though arising as he thinks through the 
organism of those early progenitors ; while each variety 
has been most marvelously and beautifully coordinated 
with its present conditions ! So long as the grades of dif- 
ference in vegetable sentience are entirely incomprehensi- 
ble to us, being only vaguely held up to our perception as 
something which must be, as evidenced by their charming 
and so carefully coordinated outward diversities, we surely 
cannot yet, reasoning from scientific facts, dogmatically 
lay down the laws of their variations. With Professor 
Agassiz and his school, one may still believe that each 
species of being is perfectly distinct in itself; that it can- 
not in any proper sense be mentally hybridized with 
another ; that it is formed after an original type which 
preexisted in the mind of the Creator, and is intrinsically 
invariable ; and that each species was introduced into the 
world nearly or quite perfect of its kind from the begin- 
ning of its career : but I do not believe with them, that 
there could have been a special act of creation necessary 
in order to establish the new class ; that their introduc- 
tion was effected by a special fiat or edict, resulting in their 
creation, or that they originally began as full grown pairs, 
from which all others were to arise by reproduction. 

On the contrary, it would seem to be almost undoubtedly 
certain, that the development theorists are right in suppos- 
ing that each successive species sprang by physically lineal 
descent from their predecessors. Yet it seems to me also 
incredible that any change of material conditions, of 



An Eclectic Development Theory. 243 

advantageous material development, or habits gradually 
inherited from ancestors, could, in themselves alone, have 
produced the wide diversities among living creatures. 
Dropping mind out of the organism, they attempt to 
account for diversities simply through the influence of 
quantitative coordinations. Whether or not they have 
generally left Mind also out of the original creative scheme, 
one need not attempt to determine, since these studies are 
in no sense a review or criticism of others. To me there 
is no blundering, blind, unforeseen modification of organic 
beings, ultimating in the final perpetuation of features 
which will most advantage each in the struggle for exist- 
ence ; but everything, to the most insignificant details, 
first coordinated in the Creative thought, is legitimately 
realized in existing things. 

Mr. Darwin's theory of " Pangenesis," — in which he 
supposes that each cell or " unit " of the body casts off its 
special " gemmules," and that these, by coordinated affinity, 
under the right conditions, cooperate together to produce 
new offspring after their own kind, thus accounting for the 
facts of inheritance and " reversion " with their multiplied 
variations, — seems to me a preeminently material theory. 
If even a crystal may supply the deficiency of a broken 
angle through the cooperative polarity of its atoms as influ- 
encing any kindred fluid : then, surely, an organism may go 
on building itself up in any determinate direction, through 
the action of its cooperative forces upon matter generally \ 
without making it necessary to suppose that there must be 
multitudes of already manufactured gemmules, which are 
required to act as germlets for every special part of the 
future organism. On the contrary, there is evidence that 
the sentient life in the new organism possesses a potency 
of its own, which is superior to all preexisting processes, 
and can modify these according to its own needs, calling 
in the aid of any generally adapted substance to that end. 
The material " affinities " or adaptations of quantitative 



244 An Eclectic Development Theory. 

atoms may account for many of the phenomena of organi- 
zation ; but not for all of them ! Just as a living sentience 
must inaugurate the first development of the germ-cell, 
though acting under a preordered conjunction of circum- 
stances ; so the same living sentience is alone adequate 
to build up its whole organism in connection with the 
adapted elements which come under its control. Let us 
once admit the existence of an indwelling, independent 
sentient life in every organism — an indivisible mind so 
coordinated with it that while perpetuating its quantitative 
processes by qualitative influences, it also modifies these 
processes ; and we render all the many conflicting facts 
of inheritance harmonious, and at once self-luminous. 
Whether the new mind is started in its sentient career 
through the aid of general organic influences only, whether 
it is dependent on one isolated germ-cell as parent, on the 
cooperation of two parent cells, or on a whole group of 
parent gemmules ; and whether the parent cells or gem- 
mules must pertain to its own species or otherwise, is of 
comparatively little moment, provided there be a real mind 
quickened in conjunction with an organism of its own, 
which both acts upon it, awakening continually within it 
new sensations, and can be in turn reacted on, and built 
up to maturity in accordance with the indwelling sentient 
needs. Reproduction is both sexual and asexual, and is 
known to be conducted through a variety of processes ; 
but in all of them alike, the mind must ultimately develop 
its own proper appetencies. The higher and stronger 
these appetencies, other things being equal, the sooner 
will the new being assume his own proper character, what- 
ever be his material beginnings. Man therefore, from 
whatever matrix he may have sprung, and through what- 
ever cooperation of cells or gemmules, must be always 
the master-architect of his own organism. His sentient 
powers are so incomparably higher than those of any mere 
animal, that they should become, at once, unconsciously 



An Eclectic Development Theory. 24 



directive of all organic processes, and should speedily 
build up the human organism in all its ordinary strength 
and beauty. Low and unrefined as the wild man may be 
in comparison with the highest types of civilization, yet we 
are not necessitated to regard him as a being who was ever 
obliged to grovel on hands and feet ! He is preeminently 
sentient ; while between the rational and irrational mind 
there is a great gulf fixed which is impassable. 



THE "STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE." 




VERY animal organism is built up and renewed 
from the remains of preexistent organisms. v It 
must feed on other organic tissues, vegetable or 
animal, if it would maintain its own organic life. The veg- 
etable derives its supplies from the organic debris which 
has fallen back into the inorganic kingdom, and from va- 
rious substances not previously organized ; but even the 
vegetable must compete with its fellows for the common 
nutriment which is supplied to them from earth and air ; 
and the animal must kill and eat its neighbors or itself die. 
There is no alternative \ and man is no exception to this 
law which is absolutely universal. 

Everything connected with organic life is correlated with 
the fact that one organism must be built up at the expense 
of another. Avery large majority among both plants and 
animals never reach maturity. It has been shown that if 
the offspring of even a single pair were all to survive, they 
would soon so fill the world with their descendants, that 
all others would be crowded out. The majority, then, 
must die prematurely ; while the minority must feed upon 
their remains. It is also true, that the greater the variety 
and the differences between the various organic forms in 
any given region, the larger the number who can find sub- 
sistence. The various classes of being, requiring such 
different conditions of life, and feeding upon such different 
states and elements of matter, the more easily find a sup- 
ply for all, the more unlike they are in their demands. 

We find, also, that the nicest adjustments everywhere 
exist between the nature and uses of the organism, and of 



The " Struggle for Existence? 247 

the materials from which it is to be sustained. The good 
cow would die if she were required to feed on flesh, and 
the noble lion would equally die if you attempted to nour- 
ish him upon a pasture of grass. Most of the strong spe- 
cial instincts of animals are related to the obtaining of a 
supply of the proper food for themselves or their offspring. 
The spider weaves her beautiful web as a snare for her 
prey, and the ant-lion constructs her pitfall with the same 
intent. Their organizations are coordinated with their pre- 
carious modes of subsistence. Kirby, in his *' Entomol- 
ogy " says, that an ant-lion will live six months uninjured 
without food ; yet when it can get it, will devour daily an 
insect of its own size. The camel, then, is no more won- 
derfully fitted for his desert-life than is this little hunter 
for her avocations. M. Vaillant kept a spider under a 
sealed glass ten months, at the end of which time it was 
as vigorous as ever, though thin. Other insects have lived 
for years, apparently fasting, yet when they do eat, they 
must find an animal tissue exactly adapted to their pecu- 
liar needs. The most curiously-related facts connected 
with parasitic animals have long excited the astonishment 
of naturalists. That a little insect-mother should know 
enough to deposit her eggs in exactly the situation in which 
they will obtain a supply of the food adapted to them, 
even though she would abhor it as nourishment for herself, 
in her present state of development, is a striking phenome- 
non. Whether she is guided by mere sensation, or by an 
intellectual sense of fitness and adaptation, is not material 
in its bearing upon the fact that all organisms are coordi- 
nated with all others, through the most various and pecu- 
liar relations ; as food mutually for each other. There is 
wheel within wheel, but all working together. Darwin 
says, "we see on every side of us innumerable adaptations 
and contrivances, which have justly excited in the mind 
of every observer the highest admiration. There is, for 
instance, a fly (Cecidoniyia), which deposits its eggs within 



248 The " Struggle for Existence? 

the stamens of a Scrophularia, and secretes a poison which 
produces a gall, on which the larva feeds ; but there is an- 
other insect (Misocampus) which deposits its eggs within the 
body of the larva within the gall, and is thus nourished by 
its living prey ; so that here a hymenopterous insect depends 
upon a dipterous insect, and this depends on its power of 
producing a monstrous growth in a particular organ of a 
particular plant. So it is in a more or less plainly marked 
manner, in thousands and tens of thousands of cases, with 
the lowest as well as the highest productions of nature." 1 
If the highest animals feed upon the more lowly, yet the 
highest of all, man himself, his organism once fallen into 
decay, becomes food for the very lowest, the plant. 

Here, then, is a cycle of perpetual change — a most 
complicated system of economy for the utilization of mat- 
ter ; allying it, through the utmost number of states and 
conditions, and a most remarkable series of correlated ex- 
pedients, to the largest variety of sentient needs. So far 
from being repelled at the thought that all organic matter 
is the common servant of many different minds, we should 
rise up in admiration at the fertility of invention evidenced 
in a scheme so full of multiplied utility, and yet so replete 
with the harmony of mutual adaptations. We are not feed- 
ing upon other living beings when we make use of the 
tissues which they, through their sentient experiences, 
have wrought up into special states exactly adapted to our 
needs ; we take from them their organisms, because He 
who created us both has designed this, and has adjusted 
all our appetencies accordingly ; because He saw, as we 
also may see, that thus only can the highest good of all be 
attained. To be thus socially related, through our bodies 
as well as our minds, is but another evidence of the unity 
of the whole rational plan of creation. By no other con- 
ceivable scheme could so many living beings, who can at- 
tain to active sentience only through the cooperation of 
matter, have lived and enjoyed at all. 

1 Animals and Plants under Domestication, p. 5. 



The " Struggle for Existence" 249 

The more we give our attention to this subject, the more 
and higher evidence shall we find that the seeming cruel- 
ties and sufferings incident to the existing organic scheme, 
axe only seeming cruelties, and that the highest beneficence 
has ordained them all. When we find the bees destroying 
their drones, and the wasps in autumn slaying their help- 
less young, we are at first shocked and repelled 3 but when 
we remember that if all the drones continue to eat, younger 
and more useful members of the community must die of 
want, and that, if the young wasps are left to the mercies 
of cold and starvation, they must miserably perish with far 
more of suffering, we become reconciled. We are justly 
shocked when the mother passes her child under the car of 
Juggernaut ; but if her premises were correct, that by so 
doing she would secure to herself and to it, eternal happi- 
ness, then her conclusion would be correct. No one can 
intelligently doubt that a larger number and a higher type 
of sentient beings may exist under the present system of 
interchanging organisms, than by any other which can be 
devised. If the young are cut off in their still exuberant 
life, and in all stages of development from the very earli- 
est, yet each life has been a good ; and it was better to live 
for even so brief a space than not to have been at all. 

The sufferings of those who die early are probably not 
greater than if they had lived to the end of their full term 
of present life ; and we must remember that sooner or 
later, they are all to die — that this is an essential part of 
the system. But we cannot, on our hypothesis, suppose 
that they are to cease to exist — that their mental consti- 
tutions are to be annihilated, or that, having once attained 
to the exercise of sentient powers, they will be compelled 
to permanently lose the possession of this free gift. The 
great desideratum must be to begin to live, even if, in con- 
nection with its first organism, for ever so brief a space ! 
Living experiences once gained, become ever more and 
more easily renewed. Exercise develops the appetency ; 



250 The " Struggle for Existence? 

so that it continually becomes more and more strong in 
itself; and, instead of requiring to be first awakened by- 
external conditions, it becomes itself an active power, seek- 
ing conditions ! If, therefore, we may trust to the benefi- 
cence which originally conferred the sentient constitution 
on each primitive atom, and which subsequently ordained 
the conditions under which it began the exercise of that 
sentience ; the coordinations necessary to the continuance 
of the only boon which makes existence of any value to 
its possessor cannot be imagined by us to have been either 
overlooked or wantonly neglected, and the plant and ani- 
mal shall live again. The great point, then, is to have 
already lived at all ; and this point is immeasurably better 
secured through the interchange of adapted organisms 
among the coordinated varieties of sentient beings, with 
their diverse sentient needs, than by any plan which we, 
with our limited powers, can suggest. Since it has been 
adopted as an integral part of the creative scheme, it 
seems not unreasonable that we should be willing to lay 
aside our first repulsions, so far at least, as to be able to 
freely exercise our rational powers in discovering the in- 
calculable advantages of the present method, its multitudes 
of exceedingly involved, but always admirable adaptations, 
the marvelous beauty of every detail, and the matchless 
symmetry of the whole. 

So long as we believed that every plant was without 
sentience, and every animal perished utterly at death, a 
warring of instincts was inevitable ; and every vegetarian 
was respected if not imitated. It seemed hard to rob the 
poor dumb creatures wholly of the little enjoyment which 
they were evidently getting out of life, and hard to give 
them pain to satisfy our own hunger, or to gratify what 
might, after all, be only a depraved appetite in ourselves. 
The hunting instincts of the panther or the cat seemed 
detestable, and those of the vulture, or of the flesh-fly and 
her grubs, simply disgusting ; but if we are sensible beings, 



The " Struggle for Existence? 251 

we must be conscious that a wider range of view, which even 
we ourselves have powers adequate to obtain, may trans- 
form all these into wonderful adaptations, subservient to 
the highest needs of the most varied sentient experience. 
If the animal will live again, we take nothing but his body 
which has been specially adapted to our best development : 
if we cut him off in his prime, we make the more room for 
his successors, and they, with their exuberant young life, 
will enjoy more than he whose organism is already be- 
coming less and less subservient to his needs, and which 
can at best, however well fed at their expense, serve him 
but for a very brief term. If we give him pain, we do this 
unwillingly, incidentally, and for but a brief moment, — 
probably, on the whole, much less than he would have suf- 
fered if left to die of old age. 

There are many compensations, also, connected with pain 
and suffering of all kinds. A wise man passes through 
few experiences, however painful at the moment, which 
he would afterwards willingly forego. They all help to 
broaden and deepen his nature, revealing him to himself 
as nothing else could have done. Even physical pain has 
its coordinated, elevating, and softening mental effect ; for 
the suffering is in reality itself mental, although caused by 
the relations of the mind to its body • so that we may well 
suppose, that, with irrational beings as with ourselves, the 
suffering, which is a necessary experience, is not wholly 
without its salutary results. That it is the instinctive 
warning away from dangers, we know ; that it is a nat- 
ural stimulus to all appetencies, we know ; that even when 
extreme, as in excessive want or acute pain, it may per- 
haps be an initiation into the exercise of higher possible 
sentient modes, we may at least hope, with some assurance 
that we are not ourselves more benevolent than Deity ; 
and that that which He desires, He may know how to ac- 
complish ! At any rate when the cat seems to be tortur- 
ing her prey, or when we watch the spider who has been 



252 The " Struggle for Existence." 

so beautifully instructed in the art of entrapping her flies, 
remembering how excessively ignorant we are, we need 
not in our hearts accuse God of malevolence ! We may be 
content to leave the irrational creatures to the free exercise 
of instincts which we find to have been so carefully coor- 
dinated by the highest rational thought, while we ourselves 
use our best endeavors to regulate our own conduct by the 
impersonal principles of rational and moral equity. 

The struggle for existence, then, regarded in its whole 
scope, is but a perfected system of cooperations in which 
all sentient and unsentient forces mutually co-work in 
securing the highest ultimate good. Appetencies and 
organisms are found to be all alike coordinated with this 
end. The round of nutritive processes is simply the wind- 
ing, material stairway, by which successive generations of 
the many types of being are mutually aiding each other to 
mount into higher stages of existence. 





THE RATIONAL MIND. 

RATIONAL mind is a mind which is able to 
perceive and appreciate the pure principles of 
things actualized in the existing universe. It is 
more than this j it is a mind coordinated with rational 
principles, as such; so that it can comprehend not only 
intellectual and moral thought, as related and actualized 
in things ; but it can originate thought, conceiving other 
rational principles, which might possibly exist, and which, 
within certain established limits, it can even cause to exist 
or become actualized as facts. Perceptive and conceptive 
forces are both modes of insight into the nature of princi- 
ples, actual or possible. Perceptive force is competent to 
discover existing substances, with their existing properties 
in their actual states, operations, and relations ; it creates 
nothing \ but perceives and knows realities of all kinds. 
The constructive mode of force, on the contrary, originates 
thought, that is, it originates fancies, imaginations, hypoth- 
eses, and various possible principles which may or may 
not be actualized as the real principles of things. 

These two modes of intellectual force are both appeten- 
cies. The intellect desires to perceive the true nature of 
things. It hungers after a knowledge of everything which 
exists, to satisfy the purely mental appetency, as really as 
it hungers for the food which is to build up its organism. 
The satisfaction which follows when it first perceives the 
character or effect of any new rational fact is a delight- 
ful experience ; of a correspondingly higher character than 
the gratification of any appetency connected only with the 
material or quantitative elements of things. This appe- 



254 The Rational Mind. 

tency. like all others, recurs again from time to time, and 
strengthened by exercise, it becomes ever more and more 
imperative. A dull man may become content, much like 
the animal, with the outside surface of things ; neither 
perceiving nor expecting to perceive very much as to their 
rational qualities ; but one whose native insight is quick, 
or who has been well disciplined, often becomes excessive- 
ly eager to know, and his gratification at any new discov- 
ery is supreme. The consciousness that one is able really 
to perceive the inmost principles of the universe, as real- 
ized and operative, must be coordinated with the most fas- 
cinating and exalted of all purely intellectual capacities. 
The moral appetencies alone can be more sublime in their 
demands, and accompanied by yet more ennobling emo- 
tions. 

Perceptive force, like any other appetency, may be over- 
wrought, or rather the mental instinct may overwork its 
material servants, and thus suffer reactions. One may 
be surfeited, also, with a multitude of unsystematized facts 
— facts which are not comprehended in all their general 
bearings, so that the intellect is cloyed by them, as the 
stomach is wearied in indigestion. Perception, from the 
very nature of it, can be wholly satisfactory only when it 
extends to the whole scheme and relations of the property 
in question. It has nothing to do, and everything to see. 

Constructive force is the instinct of personal intellectual 
power — the spontaneous assertion of innate rationality, 
which must seek for gratification by the legitimate exercise 
of its appetency. Here is the imperative need supplying 
itself through the very strength of that imperativeness. 
One always loves the ideal world which he has power to 
create. His mind-craft is more interesting to him than 
any possible handicraft, because it has more in it of his 
very life. He demands that it should be beautiful ; or at 
any rate that it should have an internal fitness and har- 
mony of its own, and be generally conducted according to 



The Rational Mind. 255 

the ordinary laws of thought, if not of fact. The child, 
with his little men of straw fancies, which he accepts as he 
does his dolls, knowing that they are only pretty effigies, is 
yet unwilling to have them discordant with his ideas of pro- 
priety, or of right and wrong. I have seen two little girls 
contend seriously for the right disposal of an imaginary 
pair of scissors, each taking a slightly personal view of 
what was required by impartial justice. A poet would be 
in despair if his work were not faultless when tried by the 
rules of poetic logic ; and all speculators and reasoners 
would throw up their vocation in disgust if they might not 
ally their thoughts to the four fundamental laws of thought 
universal. Thus are we created in the mental likeness 
of our Creator ; so that the principles which He con- 
ceived and actualized in things generally, are also realized 
in our mental constitutions. We can no more think that 
anything can be and not be at the same time, or that the 
same object can be at once round and square, or that two 
and two make anything more or less than four, than Deity 
can produce such contradictories as literal facts. 

Moral force is appetency for sentient good, allied to 
perception which can discriminate between the various 
qualities of good and thus become directive of the voli- 
tions. The moral appetency would be wholly spontaneous, 
acting impulsively instead of reflectively, and therefore 
not constituting a moral act, if it were not directed by 
moral perceptions ; making rational distinctions between 
various classes of good, and choosing accordingly. The 
appetency, the moral insight and the volition, together 
constitute moral force or " the moral sense/' and neither 
could be anything without the other. A free-will or pow- 
er of rational choice is simply the executive force pertain- 
ing to a sentient rational being, who is free to use or not 
to use it as his appetencies dictate. The will is one mode 
of force, and the person to whom it pertains, if himself a 
rational being, renders the exercise of this will a rational 
or moral act. 



256 The Rational Mind. 

Every rational mind has a moral sense — has an appe- 
tency for right moral choices. It delights one to be able 
to perceive and to choose the best, the intrinsically most 
valuable ; not for himself alone, but for others also. 
Many of his purest joys arise from the consciousness of 
thus perceiving and choosing, in despite of contradictory 
appetencies. Any good, of whatever kind, brings a still 
higher good to himself, if he can voluntarily relinquish 
it in favor of another. Thus has he been created with a 
moral constitution — a nature which can both perceive and 
choose the best, because it is the best intrinsically, and 
not from any personal considerations. His moral appe- 
tencies are directly dependent upon his rational percep- 
tions, which are able rightly to discriminate between rela- 
tive values \ for, having thus discriminated, the unselfish 
moral appetencies are ready to accept the best, however 
his own personal interests may be affected thereby. Many 
of his lower appetencies will rebel, but these must be 
brought into subjection. 

Every appetency impels towards its own legitimate grat- 
ification. Appetency is force, which, when in exercise, is 
actively seeking its object, and is choice or will to itself 
and in itself. I see no more necessity that choice should 
necessarily be selection between two or more objects, 
than that thought should always consist of compari- 
sons between two or more things ; but I maintain that as 
perceptive force may directly perceive any object by itself 
alone, so the power of willing or choosing at all, may en- 
able one to determine in favor of any single object for 
itself alone. But moral perceptions and choices necessi- 
tate comparison of obj.ects, and the accepting of that 
which best commends itself. A moral being, then, is one 
who, possessing many diverse appetencies, has yet a dom- 
inant appetency for the intrinsically highest and best ; re- 
garding things impersonally or in their abstract, intrinsic 
relations. His freedom to choose is made possible by his 



The Rational Mind. 257 

appreciation of the moral or qualitative order of things, 
thus releasing him from appetencies which are nearest and 
most personal in relation to his present individual state. 
He is able to perceive and choose the obligatory princi- 
ples of moral equity in preference to personal gratifica- 
tions, which become ignoble and wrong when brought into 
conflict with these. Principles of justice and right, es- 
tablished for the general good, are intrinsically higher, 
broader, more beautiful than any others ; and all rational 
and moral properties are coordinated with these ! Many 
of the deepest and sweetest emotions are also allied to 
them, so that the exercise of personal self-denial in favor 
of impersonal justice and right, is often rewarded with 
its own exceeding present recompense. 

Every one is conscious that he can both perceive and 
choose any form of sentient gratification, directly, as some- 
thing desirable in itself; but also that he can and often 
must select between two or more qualities of experience, 
either of which is desirable in itself, but which are incom- 
patible together. If, then, he is willing to act irration- 
ally, to close his eyes to the highest good • choosing the 
lowest because his appetencies are more clamorous for it, 
he can do so ! This is precisely the way in which the 
masses of men generally act ; yet each one is conscious 
of possessing a dominant appetency for the intrinsically 
best or right, which, if it were allowed fair play, would 
impel him to choose according to his own best judgment, 
uninfluenced by conflicting desires. One's real freedom 
lies, then, in his power to decide whether he will be gov- 
erned by his reflective, rational, and therefore impersonal 
appetencies, or by appetencies which, simply acting spon- 
taneously and being wholly personal to himself, are, like 
all unreasoning instincts, liable to lead him into injustice 
toward others, and corresponding harm to himself. 

The principles of moral equity, which are as fully es- 
tablished as any other actualized principles of things, are 
17 



258 The Rational Mind. 

the only motives which should be allowed to influence 
rational choice ! But every rational mind may choose 
its own motives, may choose which shall be its dominant 
appetencies ! The reasoning powers are coordinated with 
the moral appetencies, but even these may be subverted 
and used in the service of the irrational propensities. Since 
man has many properties in common with animals and 
plants, let him beware how, by making these dominant, he 
too, becomes to all intents a merely irrational being ; while 
his highest prerogative is the exercise of rational and 
moral attributes. 

We have seen that all sentient experiences, though the 
appetency for them is in ourselves, are yet wholly depen- 
dent upon external influences for their development. For 
all our joys, for every sensation, for every one of even our 
deepest and most personal emotions, the subjective ap- 
petency must wait on its objective coordinated supply. 
Are we hungry, food alone can content this desire ; do we 
delight in the enjoyment of beautiful forms and colors, 
material nature must furnish the objective world to gratify 
us ; are we eager for the knowledge of the rational scheme 
of the universe, this universe itself must be our only 
teacher ; would we even create new schemes of thought, 
yet we cannot think without the cooperation of our ma- 
terial brain, and our thoughts are only a recompounding 
of the established principles of thought. They are the 
immaterial, qualitative elements out of which our fabric is 
to be built up, like in kind, but not in structure. Our 
social joys, far more thrilling and exquisite than either sen- 
sation or intellectual action, are yet coordinated with all 
other sentient activity • so that all one's richest experiences 
are but a free gift from his fellows. A being, alone in time 
and space, even with the richest sentient endowments — 
since these would exist in him only as subjective possibil- 
ities to be awakened by objective coordinations — would 
be no better than any senseless clod. Let us cease, then, 



The Rational Mind. 259 

to regard even matter as contemptible. Our bodies are not 
clogs to be borne with in patience ; they are the ordained 
ministers of every good. Nor is it a most praiseworthy thing 
that we should remember the interests of others, since we 
owe every good which is most worthy of being possessed 
directly to them. We may well thank Him who has made 
all our social appetencies as much more remunerative in 
higher enjoyments as the powers of a rational mind are 
nobler than the personal or concrete faculties of any irra- 
tional being. 

We may rest, also, in the assurance that the principles 
of morality, which regard all sentient interests impartially, 
and as wholly independent of the mere personal desires, 
are the principles to be studied by every rational being, 
and to be applied everywhere and under all possible cir- 
cumstances. These principles are the natural outgrowth 
of coordinated sentient relations. It is not more certain 
that every event must occur in time, that every extended 
substance must exist in space, and that every mind must 
think according to the established laws of thought if it 
would form correct conclusions, than that every rational 
being must conform himself to the principles of moral 
equity, if he would reap the full benefits which are coor- 
dinated with the exercise of his rational faculties ! 





THE RATIONAL MIND AS CAUSE. 

I ENTIENT force may consciously direct and con- 
trol material forces, and through these it may 
influence other minds ; thus one is able to greatly 
modify existing states and processes, producing new and 
otherwise impossible events. Human beings are able to 
produce endless modifications in the normal routine of 
nature. It is not the author, the artist, the inventor, the 
agriculturist alone, who becomes the rational cause of im- 
portant new events ; but the commonest man is contin- 
ually and designedly modifying the processes going on 
everywhere about him. 

I am conscious that I can raise my arm, that with it I 
can lift up an iron mallet, and that by beating with the 
mallet against a rock I can probably rend the rock 
asunder. I decide to do this, and do it. Thus I have 
designedly inaugurated a distinct new series of events. I 
am conscious of the whole process as it advances ; for it 
is so coordinated with my sentient nature, which is coop- 
erative in the process, that the whole is literally felt by me 
as sentient cause ; and I maintain that there is no break 
in the chain of conscious process. Philosophers may 
think otherwise, — one's only appeal is to experience ! 
Physiologists treat of the conformation of nerves and tis- 
sues generally and their modes of use ; we concern our- 
selves only with the fact that mind consciously and design- 
edly uses coordinated bodily organs, and also extra-organic 
matter, to introduce changes and produce new events. The 
force which I employ is not simply my own proper sentient 
force alone ; but it is chiefly the unsentient force under my 



The Rational Mind as Cause. 261 

control, which I act in conjunction with, and which, react- 
ing in its turn upon my sentient nature, produces in me 
the completed consciousness of the entire process. 

The intelligent control which mind exercises over matter 
continually, causes new material improvements, so that the 
whole civilized world has been remodeled by the rational 
power of man. The more intelligent this power becomes, 
the more admirable are the changes effected. Mistakes 
are necessarily made ; for there must be various miscon- 
ceptions in different minds as to the true principles of 
things, and of the objects to be attained by improvements ; 
but when men have fully learned that all the rules of 
aesthetics, of utility, and of general progress, are already 
actualized as the properties of existing things, and are to 
be directly studied and perceived therein, they will become 
apt scholars, and be more ready and able to apply all 
these principles in practice. We must accept all classes 
of rational principles as the established, unchanging laws, 
in accordance with which alone can any desirable results 
be produced ; but by the cooperation with which all de- 
sirable results may be accelerated. The creative latitude 
thus conferred on us is not inconsiderable. We may well 
content ourselves with an endless modifying power, which 
can produce rearrangements and conformations innumer- 
able. We may make the whole earth blossom as the rose ; 
and by doing so we shall undoubtedly confer an incalcula- 
ble increase of pleasant living experiences upon all varie- 
ties of the most beautiful vegetable forms ; for if all things 
are coordinated in wisdom and beneficence, the most cul- 
tivated types of the great plant family are those which 
attain to the highest sentient good ! Why, then, is it not 
reasonable to suppose that we may assist them to a better 
development of their own distinctive appetencies, that their 
lives may thus become more ample, more free from the 
discomforts of their class, more replete with varied satis- 
faction, and possibly even better prepared to animate some 



262 The Rational Mind as Cause. 

future higher organism. The flower of a plant is generally 
the most beautiful not only ; but also contains the most 
highly individualized organs in the whole structure : when 
the world blossoms therefore in beauty to our eyes, one 
would be glad to know that we have produced also the 
culmination of vegetable enjoyment ! The more highly 
vegetation flourishes and becomes civilized, the higher and 
less noxious are the types of animal life which feed upon 
its adapted tissues ; and, it may be presumed, is man pro- 
portionately nourished and made harmonious, mentally as 
well as physically, with his improved surroundings. 

The human mind may become the rational cause — that 
is, the forecasting author and designer of new sentient ex- 
periences — both to itself and to other minds of all classes. 
Any rational being can almost remould himself or his child, 
through a persistent use of the right means to that end. 
The sculptor is not more truly the rational cause of the 
statue which he creates ; the chemist of the water which 
he manufactures by exploding gases, or the gardener of 
the apple which grows upon the tree which he grafted, and 
in the soil which he cultivates ; than the teacher is of the 
thoughts, emotions, and purposes which he awakens in his 
pupil. The statue could not have grown in the garden, nor 
the apple have been chiseled from the marble, even if the 
artists had expended infinite thought and labor to these 
ends ; for they must each co-work with the persisting 
nature of the things which they seek to modify. Effective 
human causality lies in producing legitimate changes and 
improvements in substances already existing with their 
immutable properties. The chemist must discover the 
right key to unlock the mysteries of nature's hydrates 
and oxides — must free the gases according to her laws, 
and marry them afterwards according to her fixed stat- 
utes. Each inventor must realize his plans in her mate- 
rials. If he would produce a self-moving machine, which 
is almost alive, he must blend the forces of her wooc 5 



The Rational Mind as Cause. 263 

and iron into his steel ; endowing it from her treasure- 
house with projectile forces which are at least equal to 
her inexorable gravitation. Perpetual-motion makers may 
be certain, in advance, that Nature will always maintain 
her balance of power ; for all her forces are correlated 
and coordinated with all possible events. Thus the edu- 
cator, either of himself or of another, must comprehend 
something of the nature of the being whom he seeks to 
modify, before he can be in any sense rational cause of 
such modifications. A person, with intelligence and voli- 
tions like his own, free to change or to resist changes of 
mode, must divide with him the rational responsibility. 
When the blow falls upon it, the glass must be shivered ; 
but if influence falls upon a rational being, he may resist 
its legitimate effects. 

Mental appetencies exist, requiring nothing but exercise 
to secure development in any direction. Sensations and 
emotions respond to every coordinated appeal from with- 
out j and you have only to co-work with the native appe- 
tencies, stimulating or repressing as is needful, to realize 
your wishes. Many of your efforts may be counteracted ; 
but a steady purpose will almost surely accomplish some 
portion of its designs. A rational man will perhaps stand 
at the helm and mark out his own course ; but an infant, 
on its early life voyage, must float at random, almost 
wholly at the mercy of circumstances. Its mind is as 
plastic to exciting influences as matter is to the moulding 
touch. As the sculptor fashions the clay after his ideal, so 
the wise teacher unfolds the powers of his pupil in any 
direction by the use of adapted stimulants. The mental 
process is no more recondite than the material, and all its 
details are equally well established ; yet the world cer- 
tainly is not yet so far advanced, either in the theory or 
practice of sentient culture, as in physical improvements. 
Education has been largely conducted as an empirical 
process. We have been content to follow precedents ; 



264 The Rational Mind as Cause. 

making but little inquiry after the principles of mental 
development. Doubtless example is the most efficient, 
and therefore the most scientific of all mental stimulants ; 
but we do well to remember that the science of rational 
causes and effects has as definite and well-established 
principles as any other branch of actualized thought ; 
while it is evidently higher in importance than any other 
or all others combined. 

He who gave Nature her innate constitution, and estab- 
lished all her coordinated processes, is her Rational Cause 
and Author, doubtless, in a higher sense than that in which 
the chemist is the cause of the water generated by the 
meeting of gases in that fiery embrace in his glass tube, 
or the gardener of the improved apple produced by intel- 
ligent high cultivation ; for He established the laws for the 
formation of water and the improvement of the apple, and 
His broad, rational design must have comprehended in its 
scope all possible events. Just as He forecasted events, 
adapting means to ends, so fore-ordination is a necessary 
element of every rational scheme. A rational cause is a 
forecasting cause, who, designing the end, uses in view of 
it the appropriate means. Rational causation involves a 
perception of how to originate or modify events, volition 
deciding to do this, and executive force able to accomplish 
it. A rational mind causes new events because the mind 
is so coordinated with their causation that it becomes a 
part of its daily vocation to do this. The rational mind 
has an appetency for acting as rational or forecasting 
cause, experiencing many qualities of satisfaction and 
delight through its exercise. A father hands his child a 
fine peach, that she may experience the sensation of a new 
and pleasant taste. He carries her to the meadow where 
she may see the grass and the lilies, that he may enlarge 
her experience and procure for her a new pleasure. He 
teaches her some of the relations of numbers, that he may 
discipline her intellect, and give her the use of her rational 



The Rational Mind as Cause. 265 

powers — in all this he is intentionally working through 
existing forces, and according to preordained processes, to 
produce desired results. 

Any finite mind, by causing a conjunction of circum- 
stances, may occasion events undesigned and undesired ; 
these are wrought out through his materials which are 
constitutionally true under all conditions. He miscalcu- 
lates the forces which he employs. Since he must co-work 
with Nature in her vast store-house of many but partially 
understood elements, there must frequently arise new 
and unexpected complications ; and dealing with sentient 
beings, themselves possessing the power to wholly or par- 
tially resist his efforts, his uncertainties increase. Of 
course his sole remedy lies in a wider knowledge of all 
the forces involved, sentient and unsentient. This alone 
can enable him to obtain over them a more complete influ- 
ence. Meanwhile, he cannot be held fairly responsible for 
all the untoward results of his interference. He is rational 
cause of so much only as he has intelligently planned \ but 
by his wisdom or folly in dealing with the powerful and 
but illy cognized powers to which Providence has related 
him, must he also be held to moral account, for Rational 
powers are coordinated with commensurate responsibili- 
ties. 

A rational mind can be the intelligent designer of events, 
and in this sense he is cause — rational cause. Matter, on 
the other hand, can be nothing but substantial or quantita- 
tive cause. It is something which passes into its effect, so 
that every quantitative effect is exactly equal to the sum 
of its causes. The effect literally is the cause or causes, 
existing under a new mode. Of course there is a radical 
distinction between rational or qualitative cause and quan- 
titative cause. Deity is the rational cause of the present 
universe. He planned or designed it, so coordinating 
means to ends that all the details of his design shall be 
ultimately consummated ; but He is in no sense the sub- 



266 The Rational Mind as Cause. 

stantial or quantitative cause of the universe ! He works 
with existing materials, as man does ) the difference being 
that while He established originally the rational nature 
and relations of those materials, and his ends are both 
proximate and ultimate, man must accept that established 
nature and its relations, contenting himself with designing 
new proximate ends, to be secured by appropriate means. 

If man, therefore, as rational cause, can accomplish so 
much, shall we doubt that the ultimate ends of the great 
First Rational Cause will be attained ? Gardens, parks, 
conservatories ; cottages, castles, cities ; roads, and rail- 
roads, in the cultivated old world, are notable improve- 
ments upon marshes, jungles, forests ; barren prairies, 
sandy plains ; wolf-paths, and Indian trails, in our great 
unkempt West ; yet the Oregon of a thousand years hence, 
will doubtless wonder at the record of crudities in the 
England of to-day ! And can we doubt that social prog- 
ress — the progress of the human race with its rational 
and moral attributes — has been coordinated with physical 
progress ? The Infinite Mind as Cause has not so irra- 
tionally constituted his Universe ! 

The human mind is cause also of pure qualitative values. 
It creates these, perpetually increasing the sum-total of 
sentient experiences. Pure principles and relations of all 
kinds, and the correlated personal appreciation of them, 
which in its various modes we call perceptions, concep- 
tions, emotions, and volitions — that is, thoughts, feelings, 
and choices generally, are not convertible into quantitative 
values, nor can the material nature of the one represent 
the immaterial nature of the other. Mind may be the 
originator of new material events by the intelligent reor- 
dering of material forces ; but when a mind excites or 
directs a new mental process, either in itself or another, 
the mental experience is a positive increase of sentient 
values. 

The standard of all values is purely qualitative, so that 



The Rational Mind as Cause. 267 

each mind must affix its own estimate of them, which it 
does according to its powers of relative appreciation. A 
teacher may explain some series of natural events to his 
class, as for instance the nature of light, its undulations, 
and the general relations of color. One pupil is filled 
with admiration at the nice adjustment of forces which can 
enable every ray of the sunbeam to act always in charac- 
ter, performing its delicate work with mathematical ac- 
curacy. Another regards all this as super-refined and 
unpractical ; but is deeply interested in the effect of light 
upon the various arts ; while yet another is feeling that an 
hour in the sunshine, with a young friend and a fast horse, 
would be better to him than the whole philosophy of light? 
useful or beautiful. All values are thus immeasurable, 
because no two minds can have a common standard, and 
it is only when you bring them down and ally them to 
quantities, that you know how to apply the principles of 
justice and equity. Yet just as there is a perpetual in- 
crease of new material events, although there is no increase 
of the materials entering into those events, so there is a 
perpetual increase of sentient good or evil, although neither 
the experiencing mind nor the co-working unsentient forces 
are increased. Any rational mind, then, may become the 
intelligent cause or designer of such experiences, either in 
himself or others. He may elevate or degrade the char- 
acter of such experiences. He has only to comprehend 
the nature of his forces, cooperating with all that is in- 
trinsically highest and noblest, in order to render every 
life about him more beautiful for his influence. Indeed, 
one has only to be truly noble and unselfish in order by 
his social influence to infect others with his own character ; 
so that even a child, with no intent of doing good, and 
with his rational powers too undeveloped to know how to 
act discreetly, may yet be the moral benefactor of all who 
meet him. Thus the simplest natures, if only self-forget- 
ful and thoughtful for others, are always the most beloved ; 



268 The Rational Mind as Cause. 

for they appeal to our best moral appetencies, elevating 
our sensibilities unconsciously to themselves. The grace- 
ful chamois has no turn for aesthetics, though himself a 
gem of beauty, in his picturesque setting of mountain and 
crag. 

One mind may communicate with another almost wholly 
through the medium of the senses ; but in all intellectual 
and moral communion, the material cooperation is com- 
paratively small. When the mind is occupied with the 
purely rational character of things, it becomes compara- 
tively independent of the ponderable elements. An exalted 
divination enables one mind to interpret another \ thoughts, 
feelings, and purposes are given and received without an 
intervening tangible medium, so that words and even looks 
become superfluous. In our ordinary conversation, while 
we listen to each others' voices or exchange looks, yet the 
rational principles about which we converse, are, by the 
one mind, embodied in words or looks, and by the others, 
directly perceived as thus made visible to them. The 
quantitative can represent quantities ; but everything quali- 
tative must present itself. It has no extended form that it 
should be imaged, but is a pure mental creation which 
can be represented by nothing else whatever. We can 
either embody it in language or in things generally, and 
we may lead one's mind in the direction for perceiving it 
by referring to analogous or parallel properties or their 
opposites. One phase of thought or emotion may be 
made, in some sense, to represent another ; that is, it 
stands in the place of another or imitates it ; but is not its 
true representative. A musical instrument may be made 
to suggest the song of birds, the chirping of insects, the 
sounds of the winds and waters, the peal of thunder, and 
almost every other sound natural or artificial ; but sound 
alone can represent sound. A blind man may fancy that 
a brilliant scarlet is like the blare of a trumpet, but it is 
very unlike it nevertheless. Neither does the sound repre- 



The Rational Mind as Cause. 269 

sent the sentiment which is embodied in it ; but for the 
time being it gives expression or actualization to it, and 
this is directly or presentatively perceived. Sound, there- 
fore, is but the medium of communication — not the repre- 
sentative of the thought communicated. 

Nor is there necessarily a quantitative relation between 
the two. The lowest whisper, freighted with an impor- 
tant thought, produces infinitely more impression than a 
thoughtless shout. Two persons may listen to the same 
message, and yet one will be almost unimpressed by it, 
while another is thrown into the utmost excitement. The 
quantitative force used was identical, but the two persons 
were differently related to the quality of the communica- 
tion. During the terrible prevalence of cholera some years 
since, a lady and gentleman were conversing on the sub- 
ject with the quiet though tfuln ess of people in a rural 
neighborhood, remote from the scenes where it prevailed. 
The lady remarked with some solicitude : " I have a 
brother who is probably now at S." — naming one of the 
infected cities. " I shall feel anxious till I hear from 
him ! " 

" Your brother ! " exclaimed the gentleman \ " the Rev. 
Mr. B. of S. ! He is dead ! I was told so not fifteen 
minutes ago ! " It was thoughtlessly uttered ; for he did 
not yet realize the force of his own words, his strongest 
emotion at the moment being a simple surprise. But he 
smote the listener's heart with a blow the strongest arm 
could never have given. What quantitative force here was 
suddenly transformed into the dull, terrible chill of that 
first mental shock. The effect was mental arid the pro- 
ducing cause qualitative. The related material elements 
were insignificant, though the shock, once received, reacted 
upon the whole organism. Any strong emotion exercises 
strong control over the body ; the mind uses its correlated 
unsentient forces in the service of its sentient experiences ; 
but this class of emotions is originally excited by qualita- 



270 The Rational Mind as Cause. 

tive — not by quantitative causes. This is true of all the 
higher orders of sentient modes ; sensation and the percep- 
tion of material forms alone being quantitatively correlated 
to material elements. A little later this young lady received 
authentic assurance that it was another Rev. Mr. B. of S. 
who had fallen a victim to cholera, while her brother was 
still in health. The sudden reaction of her mind to a 
relieved and grateful joy naturally expressed itself in a 
lightened step and a bright eye ; for these wait on a glad 
heart as naturally as languid movements and the dimmed 
eyes are responsive to a weary sorrow ; but the sentient 
emotion is not transformed into the unsentient movement. 
Say rather that when mental force is concentrated largely 
on any one mode, that this mode exercises a correspond- 
ingly strong control over coordinated material forces, 
not that it is transformed into these forces. Because a 
man in a terrific passion will sometimes stamp or tear his 
hair ; because a wood-chopper expends muscle, and thus 
stimulating the organ by exercise causes it to be still 
more vigorously renewed ; or because a man who thinks, 
uses brain, producing coordinated changes in his whole 
organism, we are not, therefore, to infer that passion or 
the exercise of will in the use of mechanical force, or 
of thought in intellectual processes, is transformed into 
mechanical force. There is undoubtedly a quantitative 
action and reaction between every mind and the matter 
cooperative with it ; but the kind and intension of sentient 
experience are not necessarily dependent upon this quan- 
tity ; but may be more or less, indefinitely, while yet the 
quantitative elements remain unvaried. Thus one mind 
influences or causes changes in another by occupying it 
with rational principles or with various social and moral 
emotions, though the physical agencies used may be few 
and unimportant. Indeed the most purely rational causes 
use the most purely rational agencies, so that the best 
educator is he who can bring to bear the highest and best 



The Rational Mind as Cause. 271 

motives. Yet if he would cause these to become motives, 
he must present them in a form adapted to the appetencies 
and capacities of his pupil. To become the intelligent, 
judicious cause of new qualitative events is therefore one 
of the highest arts to be acquired by a rational being. It 
requires far more wisdom and address to steadily improve 
the habitual modes of a rational mind, without arousing 
opposition on its part, than to deal with any other class 
of properties. Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as 
doves ! 





MEMOR Y. 

U EMORY brings past experiences back again into 
present consciousness. That it can do this in 
some sense and to some extent, no one doubts. 
It only remains to discuss the nature of memory, its prov- 
ince, and its mode of action. 

Memory is a sentient power, and like all other sentient 
forces it has its own keen appetency, impelling it .into 
frequent exercise. It delights us to recall past pleasures, 
to revive again the experience which charmed us on its 
first occurrence, or to trace connections between it and 
other events by which it was preceded or followed. We 
are self impelled to this, and to rejoice in the results, as 
certainly as we are mentally incited to eat, to relish our 
food, or to look out upon the world, rejoicing in its beauty. 
Even painful memories have their fascinations, by which 
at times they attract ; and their still stronger repulsions, 
goading us on to seek more pleasurable experiences. 

The appetency for remembering is also coordinated with 
its objective stimulants, and is incited by them into exer- 
cise. All the associations and adaptations of objects 
among themselves are so many mutual stimulants to 
memory ; which is thus able the more readily to recall 
them in connection. The utility, and the charm of so 
widening the scope of consciousness as to take in all past 
experiences at will, are perpetual and ever present incen- 
tives to the activity of " reproductive energy." 

Memory is simply that mode of personal force which 
recollects or revives past personal experiences of all kinds ; 
if then, we can decide how these experiences were first 



Memory. 273 

awakened, we may find a clew which shall guide us to the 
modes through which they are reawakened. 

Perception arises through the presence of the perceived 
object; the visible traits of the object are daguerreotyped 
upon the mind, or the rational scheme of it is read and 
interpreted by the perceiving mind, and is thus made its 
own — an element of its own personal thought. A con- 
cept, also, is a personal experience — a modification of 
the mind ; so is a sensation, an emotion, and a purpose. 
All these are more or less dependent upon the objective 
world to furnish occasions for their exercise ; but having 
become the veritable experiences of a continuous person- 
ality, they are so many modes or phases of that person- 
ality itself. As affections of the persisting being, they 
must pertain to it thenceforth ; and need only to be remem- 
bered or recalled into present consciousness, to be realized 
as themselves persisting. Anything, then, subjective or 
objective, analogous to the original conducing means to 
any particular modification of mind, will tend to reawaken 
that experience. 

Space and time, as two different measures of processes 
both mental and material, severally relate all mental ex- 
periences. Events connected in place or time are likely 
to be also mentally associated and remembered together. 
The more remote, also, an event is in time, the more 
removed is it likely to be from present experience, and 
the less readily, other things being equal, will it be re- 
called. Old age, passing in thought the intermediate 
active life, and remembering again the events of child- 
hood, is not an exception to this rule, but a most striking 
illustration of its truth \ since the sympathies and occupa- 
tions of childhood and extreme age are more nearly akin 
than those of business-troubled, active middle life. The 
fact that an aged man does recall even the trifles of long 
past boyish days, is a striking proof, if any were needed 

aside from the nature of the things themselves, that all 
18 



2 74 Memory. 

experiences of the mind are its own personal treasures 
forever. 

Again, events bound together by any chain of cause and 
effect, rational or material, must naturally stand related 
still in memory. Resemblances or contrasts, and, in short, 
all associations, intrinsic or accidental, are mutually sug- 
gestive ; and the same or similar conditions with those 
which originally excited the experience will again recall it 
into present consciousness. Different classes of associa- 
tions, also, variously affect different minds, modifying the 
general process of remembering by individual peculiari- 
ties. Thus one person, with a strong sense of the gro- 
tesque, will recall events through suggestions of the oddest 
analogies and the most whimsical or ludicrous incidents ; 
while another can remember dates, and groups of events. 
Of course our modes of remembering must be as unlike 
as our modes of thinking. Memory is also largely a mat- 
ter of habit or practice ; for exercise of this mode of men- 
tal action, of course, strengthens and develops it like that 
of every other. A disproportionately good memory seems 
sometimes to absorb other modes of the mind into itself; 
but large retentive powers are also compatible with the 
most vigorous and well-disciplined mind. 

It is necessary to understand fully that memory gives 
us only the subjective eleme?it of events ; and that the objec- 
tive is as wholly outside of its province as it is outside of 
the intrinsic personality of the me. I have the memory 
of a quiet country church, at the mention of which there 
rises before me widely different eras of thought and feel- 
ing. I can see hundreds of faces, from those of faded, 
withered elders to the plump cheeks of long-ago young 
children. Again I see these once children grown into 
bronzed and sallow middle life, and sitting in the old 
pews, with their stalwart, blooming youths and maidens. 
Among die shifting groups there are ruddy faces, which to 
me will *ae&&r .change ; and there are the still white faces 



Memory. 275 

of an ever young brother and sisters, in my memory sleep- 
ing forevermore in that front aisle ; and yet the old church 
is now burned to ashes, while changes more than I know 
have fallen upon the scattered people. All the objective 
elements have changed or passed away ; and the changes 
of subjective experience have been greater even than any 
of these ; yet those early memories must always vividly 
recur, because gained when life was young, eager, and all 
its powers alert. They are living gems in the mosaic of 
memory which destruction cannot overtake, if I abide for- 
ever ! Objectively », the transient perishes while the perma- 
nent is conserved ; but our percepts of each alike endure. 

Distinctions must be made also between different classes 
of experience. Any pure principle — a thought, or a pur- 
pose, or anything closely connected with the rational powers 
— may often be recalled as clearly as at first, while sensa- 
tion or emotion is very rarely felt a second time with all the 
intensity of the first. The philosophy of this difference is 
evident. Our cognitive powers suffice, in any ordinary 
condition of mind and body, to recall in thought any pure 
rational principle or any past purpose. Such a principle, 
first perceived in the object, is incorporated in the intelli- 
gence of the perceiving mind — abiding there thenceforth 
for easy reference. The process of acquisition was almost 
purely mental in the beginning ; therefore, the stimulating 
mind and its organism can co-work in the absence of an 
extra-organic object. Hence one is able to realize in his 
own experience that thought is indestructible. The same 
truth recurs to him again and again. When an idea which 
he remembers something about, seems to have been utterly 
lost to him, perhaps for years, suddenly, it may be, to his 
intense astonishment and delight, it recurs to him in all 
its vividness, distinct as though it had never passed out 
of his consciousness. This is especially true of what has 
been termed a u philosophic memory," or a memory of 
associated principles. There is no one who dwells much 



276 Memory. 

among abstract ideas and their relations, whose heart has 
not jumped for joy with some such experience as this. 
Our choices, too, being largely determined by our own 
mental states at the time, are easily recalled ; but not so 
easily rechosen ; for our purposes are often almost as 
variable as our sensibilities. Volition may be in subjec- 
tion, either to our rational powers or to our desires, and 
on this depends the stability or instability of our pur- 
poses. The sensibility is always much more dependent 
than the intellect upon present modes and habits of 
feeling ; upon organic and other external conditions, and 
also upon the presence of the object or exciting cause of 
the emotion ; and, therefore, emotions, sensations, and all 
states of mind which depend upon these, are seldom repro- 
duced with all their original zest. We recall a past choice, 
perhaps with no desire to rechoose it, or some former 
intense desire or emotion is remembered with the utmost 
present indifference. Even the strongest attractions of 
the past may only repel us in the present The more new 
experiences intervening, the less likely are the old feelings 
to be again brought into ardent action. Emotions which 
are dependent upon intellectual and moral principles, 
must wait upon habits and appetencies of the mind ; while 
sensations are dependent on material coordinations. The 
mind may have adopted a wholly unlike emotional attitude 
from that to which it is now habituated, and from which it 
is not again easily swerved. It cannot fall back into sym- 
pathy with emotions which are outgrown. Those affec- 
tions which are most nearly universal, and most germain 
to every sentient constitution, such as parental love and 
other social instincts, are most easily revived in memory. 

Since mind and body both enter into new phases so 
continually, and external conditions so constantly vary, 
although past modifications of the sentient life are all real 
and indestructible, like the life itself, yet those experiences 
which are largely dependent on adjustment of conditions are 



Memory. 277 

never fully reproducible in present consciousness without a 
reproduction also of those conditions. Pure principles are 
intrinsically comparatively independent of matter, while 
sensations and their correlated perceptions are almost 
wholly dependent on it — dependent moreover on the 
most careful adjustments, mental, organic, and extra- 
organic. All the way between these extremes, thought 
and feeling blend in the sentient experience in varying 
proportions. It is the universal law that those experiences 
most dependent upon external conditions for their original 
production, are, in the absence of those conditions, most 
difficult of reproduction in memory. 

All classes of feeling are necessarily in close relations 
with their objective occasions. The knowledge of a truth 
in the abstract is distinct and clear in perception, in pro- 
portion as it is disencumbered of its factitious acquired 
relations, through its embodiment in things ; while the 
reverse is true with all experiences of the sensibility. 
Knowledge of suffering, in the abstract, affects us but lit- 
tle ; but the presence of a sufferer will awaken the tender- 
est pity. To know that a whole army are bleeding and 
dying on a distant battle-field does not move us so deeply 
as one wounded soldier brought home to our active sym- 
pathies. We can weep with the heroine of a story because 
her griefs are present to our imaginations ; but we sit idly 
calm, though we know that the real heroines of life are 
suffering far more deeply and variously than language can 
depict. 

Every good cause is inevitably promoted by agitation 
and discussion, because its intrinsic merits are thus held 
up to present view, and in contrast with conflicting demer- 
its which only heighten the effect. Indeed, agitation pro- 
motes every cause which is not absolutely baseless and 
irrational \ for as its plausible features are always pre- 
sented, they are generally readily adopted by the unthink- 
ing, simply because the mental appetency demands the 



278 Memory. 

stimulus of new thought, and is ready to accept anything 
which for the moment seems obvious. This is the strong- 
est of all arguments in favor of an ever-active promulga- 
tion of important truth. Anything to be accepted, or to 
produce a present influence, must be brought home to the 
present consciousness. 

Memory is that mode of force which can bring into pres- 
ent consciousness past phases of experience. All pure 
rational experiences are most readily reproducible as they 
are at once most independent of all external coordinations, 
and, being rational or impersonal in character, are also 
most independent of personal changes of mode ; while 
sensations and emotions are least readily recalled, because 
closely related both to objective conditions, and to subjec- 
tive modifications. In other words, memory, like all other 
forces, acts only in conjunction with its established coor- 
dinates. It is the present and immediate perception, not 
of the objective, but of the subjective element in past 
events ; and it is as necessarily immediate in its action as 
any other form of self-consciousness. 






LANGUAGE. 

|ENTIENT life instinctively learns to express aud- 
ibly its own varied feelings, Sound is produced 
by a coordination of material forces \ and even 
inanimate nature has its own variety of appropriate nor- 
mal sounds. We can hardly call the murmur of leaves 
when stirred by the wind an expression of their content, 
though one might easily fancy that even they have their 
own little articulate expression of vegetable satisfaction ■ 
but the insects, the birds, and the higher animals unmistak- 
ably express their feelings in sound. There is as much 
joyous welcome to his master in the glad barking of a dog, 
as in the ringing voice of his little human playmate. The 
cry of a wounded animal is sometimes as touching as that 
of a child ; and the cry of a grieved child is as pitiful as 
any sound with which the human ear may ever expect 
to be greeted. A spring-morning carol of birds is a 
jubilate of innocent excitement. Cries of rage in a wild 
animal, and even in our own domestic bull and stallion, are 
terrific ; while the lowing of kine and the whinny of the 
horse, maybe as peaceable as their own meadows. Insects 
have their notes of love and general rejoicing ; and though 
they are not known to use the voice, yet they have their 
own modes of speech, and ring out their harmonic rounde- 
lays, making the summer evening at once both jubilant and 
sentimental. 

The human voice, unless artificially schooled into a 
false tone, instinctively expresses every variety of human 
emotions. The laugh of a little child is a spontaneous 
poem ; and the merry prattle of a group of children more 



280 Language. 

really musical than the artistic singing of any professional 
glee-club. While a boy is still too young to find fitting 
language for expressing his feelings, you can readily gather 
them from his look and tones. Even at a later period, 
when caution and insincerity have begun to creep into his 
words , his tones are still the best interpreters of his desires. 
In later life, after long training in the school of conven- 
tionality, his emotions are not so patent in his voice ; yet 
even then it is only by the most determined effort that any 
strong passion can be wholly suppressed in expression. If 
he deliberately disguises or falsifies his emotions, the men- 
tal force expended in accomplishing this, for a time sup- 
presses or suspends the emotion itself, transforming it into 
the sheer, hard effort of will. His struggle to control the 
emotion will thus tend directly to subdue it ; and if the 
exciting cause be removed, it will never return to him in 
its first intensity ; but if the cause remain in all its origi- 
nal force, the suppression, followed by a strong reaction, 
may rekindle the emotion even greatly intensified. 

The voice is certainly the natural outlet for every mode 
of feeling. A sigh is generally quite involuntary, and a 
groan is often a great comfort — even almost a necessity 
in very acute suffering. If not restrained by a sense of 
personal dignity, backed by education and some conscious- 
ness of the rights of others, there is no reason why grown 
men and women might not go on crying like children over 
every hurt, physical or mental ; or why a gentleman might 
not scream, like any fine lady, at the unexpected proximity 
of some poor little insect. 

The changes of the countenance and the attitudes of 
the body are all more expressive of feeling than of thought. 
Smiles and frowns are nearly universal. Each class of 
emotions or passions has its own coordinated looks, ges- 
tures, and attitudes. A child's face, like his voice, is a 
truer index of his present feelings than the man's : his 
eyes are little beacons always alight with the spontaneous, 



Language. 281 

internal warmth. Anger, pity, joy, sorrow, and all the 
other impulses to which his young life is subject, radiate 
from his face as though it were a mirror, reflecting out to 
you the phases of the soul shining upon it from within. 
Thank God that his whole carriage is usually as jubilant 
and bounding as the young life which has learned but 
little yet of weariness or retribution ! Thus all things have 
been tenderly ordered everywhere for the inexperienced ! 
In after-life the habits of a person are so inwrought in the 
features, and in the whole form and bearing, that however 
possible it may be to conceal any given emotion for a 
time, it is next to impossible to disguise all the tokens of 
a customary frame of mind. The smooth serenity of a 
genuine Quaker, and the wiry unrest of a Yankee trader, 
are not mere caricatures of the real men ; they are em- 
bodied facts — the permanent language of habit. The 
step of habitual weariness will not become elastic even at 
the close of the longest holiday. Crushing dependence, 
or independent ease of position, each become personified 
in their subjects. Deep sorrow leaves its gentle, mournful 
signet on eye and brow, disappointment graves its mark 
in bitterness, and darker passions bespatter the whole 
man with an outer stain of contamination. 

Even animals typify externally the nature of their sen- 
tient internal life. There is more wary alertness in the 
beautiful tiger than in the soft, mild-faced sheep. One can 
hardly see an ox, — that toiling, emasculated bond-servant 
of men, — without getting a new suggestion of the worth of 
patient, strong endurance, even under great wrong. It 
would be easy to indulge the illusion that every plant, 
rooted in the nurturing soil and reaching up to the afflu- 
ence above, is a type of a sentiment far better than that 
we express by the ignoble word vegetate. To me plants 
personify acceptance, trust, serenity, contentment. 

Words are correlated to thoughts. The appetency 
which impels us to the expression of thoughts, as instinc- 



282 Language. 

tively uses the adapted organism to effect this, as the appe- 
tency for seeing uses the eyes, or hunger the mouth. An 
infant of a few months will smile and crow back in response 
to its mother ■ at a year it has generally mastered some 
easy and expressive words, and at ten, a well-trained, in- 
telligent child has become quite a linguist in its mother 
tongue, and possibly in several other tongues which it 
habitually hears pronounced. The facility with which 
children master a language which is spoken to them is 
proverbial, and the philosophy of this seems to be very 
evident. Instinctively seeking expression for each new 
experience as it arises, on hearing a word used to indicate 
any present object, or any existing feeling, they grasp it 
with an almost single-minded avidity. Their range of 
experiences is narrow, and as it widens, the use of lan- 
guage is thus easily acquired as the vehicle needed by 
their enlarging ideas. In later life, association has already 
joined the word to its idea ; and the range of experience 
has become so extensive that the mental energy and atten- 
tion are diffused. Memory, too, making the past a shad- 
owy perpetual present, leads often to a lessened interest 
in current events, while anticipation and hope open a new 
deceitful present in the much desired future. Memory, in 
general, is thus made to appear much less tenacious in 
matured life than in childhood ; for divided attention is 
favorable neither to new acquirements nor to a systematic 
command of the old. Learning a language late in life, it 
is as though an innate jealousy of the accustomed tongue, 
made it a perpetual rival of the foreign one. Thus many 
a family, resident in a foreign land, is surprised to find the 
elders far outstripped by the little children in their efforts 
to acquire the current speech. Acquired discipline, inclu- 
ding the habit of concentration, is found to be an offset 
which with most minds, at least in the study of a spoken 
language, is scarcely an equivalent for the fresh directness 
of a young being whose life is all in the present ; and 



Language. 283 

whose whole soul drifts as a unit into the mood of the 
moment, whatever it may happen to be. 

Words are evidently in part imitations of natural sounds ; 
as in the terms ma, mama, maman, papa, pater, fader, 
vater ; which simulate the natural cries of the child in need 
of care. We have other examples, in the bow-wow, the 
moo-cow, the ba-sheep, and many active verbs and their 
derivatives, as whiz, whirr, whirl, whip, boom — in short, 
the whole group of buzzing, trilling, rough sounds in 
all languages. Their quieter kindred, such as murmur, 
gurgle, tinkle, hush, hist, still, listen, seem suggested by the 
lulling monotony of blended summer sounds, in which 
noise and quiet are at once harmonized. Gesture and pan- 
tomime arise also from the intrinsic harmony and fitness of 
things, and are essentially the same among all peoples, of 
however different habits and modes of thought. Philolo- 
gists find more and more similarity between all languages, 
the more the subject is investigated. 

Modern language is of course largely derivative ; but the 
most ancient tongues evidence an unexpected likeness, 
which can be accounted for only by supposing, either that 
they grew up independently, equally arising out of the 
natural relations of things, or that they were mutually 
derived from some still older dialect Probably both 
sources have aided in the production of every language 
now extant ; as we find them to-day both enriching and 
modifying every living tongue, still in the process of nor- 
mal growth. Representative language may be said to have 
had a simple growth by accretion ; for it deals with the 
obvious elements of things, producing similarity in all 
tongues as the legitimate result ; but it is combined with 
a purely mental process of thought, seeking to embody 
enlarging experiences in symbols and words, arbitrarily 
defined and arbitrarily harmonized with the already estab- 
lished modes of expression. 

The growth of language, presenting the innumerable 



284 Language. 

phases and degrees of sentient experience, is something 
nearly as wonderful as the creation of physical nature 
itself; and it is at least closely analogous to it even in 
kind. It is the physical or embodied expression of sen- 
tient experience, whether feeling, thought, or purpose, and 
is created progressively ; many minds acting toward a 
common end, and adopting, by general consent, series of 
given signs as embodying corresponding series of recog- 
nized experiences. All language may be regarded as one 
magnificent structure, well built and harmonious as a 
whole, but with incongruities and discrepancies of detail 
when viewed from different stand-points. The real marvel 
consists in the essential unity of the thought attached by 
many minds to the same term ; rather than to the shades of 
difference affixed to it by different minds, and by the same 
mind on different occasions. Language is itself the high- 
est evidence of the unity of all like sentient experiences, 
enabling each mind readily to comprehend the thoughts 
of others through its own personal appreciation of them. 
Ears and eyes are severally the channels through which the 
body of language co-acts with one's own organism ; but 
the recipient mind perceives directly the rational element 
embodied. 

Each author is creator, not so much of original thought, 
as of new combinations and expressions of thought. Spok- 
en language is a present process, vanishing as it passes, 
but written language is as enduring as the material used. 
Deaf mutes can read the thoughts expressed through the 
eyes and fingers ; and the deaf and blind, like Laura Bridge- 
man, by simple touch. Smell and taste also are in some 
instances exceedingly useful to the blind ; and in scientific 
pursuits they often lend important aid to perception when 
grosser senses are in default. 

Every mechanical invention is the language of its own 
scheme of thought, expressed in some combination of mat- 
ter and its forces. Painting, sculpture, pictures, hieroglyph- 



Language. 285 

ics, are so many modes of language embodying their ap- 
propriate ideas. Art produces its carefully elaborated 
concepts of the beautiful, homely, grand, ludicrous ; for- 
ever seeking a more suitable form for its ideal than any 
present natural embodiment. A perfectly mathematical 
crystal is a rare product of nature, though the ideal theory 
according to which all crystals are evidently formed, and to 
which they all approximate more or less nearly, is perfectly 
and mathematically accurate in all of its several types. 
Thus everything in nature is more or less varied from its 
normal ideal ; the most successful artist is perhaps he 
who can best perceive these ideals and embody them 
most perfectly in his creations ; the language of highest 
art may thus be more beautiful and expressive than even 
nature herself. In composition, one may ignore the mal- 
formed and the commonplace, which nature everywhere 
tolerates and propagates. A painted landscape, or a land- 
scape garden, representing only the harmonious, and seek- 
ing the most perfect ideals, may appear even more charm- 
ing than nature herself; as well as much more suggestive, 
and more readily understood by ordinary minds. Men 
are placed here, undoubtedly, to cultivate the earth and to 
subdue all its imperfections, material and rational ; but it is 
indispensable first to attain the perfect, one's-self, before 
seeking to give it expression. Language embodies expe- 
rience. A parrot or a monkey is as worthy to be called an 
artist, as is one who attempts to create any language or 
embodied expression of any kind, without first perfecting 
it as a living, personal intuition of his own. 

The appetency which impels every rational being more 
or less strongly to seek adequate expression for all the 
modes of his sentient life, is not only innate in his consti- 
tution, but is so inherently coordinated with the material 
elements which are adapted to embody and present his 
experiences to others, that language, regarded as an ulti- 
mate fact, must be as much a legitimate part of the gen- 



286 Language. 

eral scheme of creation as is crystallization or any other 
result of a predetermined process. In the one process, 
the acting forces, unsentient, irrational, and involuntary, 
act mathematically, as they are coordinated to act ; in the 
other, the force is sentient, rational, and free to choose its 
modes, not only as between this and that form of expres- 
sion, but as between expression and but partial expression 
or non-expression, in any given instance — therefore here, 
certainty, or mathematical precision as to nett results, is 
impossible. In the one case the product is always fixed 
and absolute ; in the other it is a perpetually varying re- 
sult, both in quantity and quality. Humanity mustr needs 
perpetually seek expression for its ever-widening experi- 
ences, because such expression is coordinated with some 
of the highest modes both of primary and reflex satisfac- 
tion ; but the form and extent of such expression is necessa- 
rily dependent at once on the choices and the rational 
ability both of individuals and of the social whole. There- 
fore, like every other process pertaining to mind, language 
is not a fixed, but a perpetually varying quantity, so far as 
it can be quantitatively estimated at all. The point here 
is, that language, like any other product of mental force 
expressed in matter, must be regarded as the normal out- 
growth of the inherent constitution of mind. Human lan- 
guage is the legitimate expression and product of the 
experiences of the human soul, in the use of its proper 
powers as coordinated with material forces. Each mind 
at once embodies thought and perceives the thoughts of 
others when similarly expressed. Thus has originated lan- 
guage proper — an elaborated system of expression, to be 
regarded as at once the spontaneous outgrowth of nature, 
and at the same time as a highly artistic creation of the hu- 
man intellect. 



THE CONSERVATION OF MATTER AND ITS 
PROPERTIES. 

INCE Lavoisier invented the balance, experimen- 
talists have practically tested the fact that matter 
!i is indestructible. Nothing is created and noth- 




ing annihilated. It is found after every change in the 
modes of matter that the same quantity permanently 
exists, though perhaps under widely different forms. Skill- 
ful chemists have been enabled to trace every thousandth 
fraction of a grain from one transformation to another, and 
thus to prove by actual weight that matter is never anni- 
hilated. There is no wearing out of the substance itself, 
but only of the fabric, scattering its undiminished particles 
to the four winds. Rocks may crumble to sand, but the 
sand remains ; sand may be melted into glass, the glass 
ground to powder, and the powder mingled as ingre- 
dients in a dozen several compounds ; yet the substance, 
unchanged in quantity, continues to exist. When the 
candle burns, its substance is not consumed, but is only 
converted into gases. Not since Priestley's time, when 
the theory of Phlogiston was believed in, has any natural- 
ist for a moment admitted even the possibility of the de- 
duction of matter. Neither is it found that substance is 
ever added to, or by any possible process increased in 
quantity. When plants and animals grow, they gather the 
materials used from the earth, sun, air, or from other 
organic structures ; but no atom is brought into existence 
or created from nothing, under the existing order of things. 
This great fact, that matter is a fixed, unvarying quantity, 



288 Conservation of Matter and its Properties. 

once established by science, has led to great exactness 
and care in all analyses. It has resulted in the discovery 
of unsuspected elementary substances, which, though small 
in quantity, perform perhaps most important work in the 
economy of nature : it has confirmed the habit of mathemat- 
ical exactness in experimental science, applying the nicest 
varied tests, and compelling the most careful attention to 
the minutest details. The ingenuity and beauty of many 
of these experiments is something wonderful and well- 
nigh incredible. This nice practical skill has arisen 
directly from the assurance that no atom of substance 
ever has been or ever can be either originated or de- 
stroyed. If this fundamental fact could be disproved, in- 
ductive science would lose its zest, and fall back again 
into the slovenly inaccuracy of early days. When an 
experiment failed, it would again be supposed to fail 
because of the destruction or creation of some residuum 
of matter ; thus all quantitative science would stand par- 
alyzed and virtually dead. But the truth remains. Matter 
is inherently existent. It is superior to time — every atom 
a perpetual fact. 

A still greater advance in science was made by the dis- 
covery that all the forces of matter are also persistent. 
They change their modes of action, and are correlated 
with each other or convertible from one mode into an- 
other ; but they are all alike absolutely conserved. Me- 
chanical force can be changed directly or indirectly into 
heat, light, electricity, magnetism, cohesion, and every 
other known mode of force : these can be again recon- 
verted into mechanical force or into each other. The rela- 
tion between them is found to be so strictly quantitative, 
that a given amount of one mode of force will always pro- 
duce a given amount of any other, under like conditions. 
Though the definite relations between all the various 
modes are not yet well ascertained, yet enough is known 
to assure us that all the forces of simple matter can be 



Conservation of Matter and its Properties. 289 

estimated in quantitative values, and that the smallest 
fraction of force can no more be destroyed than can matter 
itself. It is equally true that no new force can be originated ; 
but that a definite, fixed amount continues and must con- 
tinue absolutely, under the existing constitution of things. 1 

Scientific men accept the doctrine of the conservation 
of force with great unanimity : and are ready to admit its 
consequences even when most rigidly applied. The fact 
that matter with all its constituent properties is indestruc- 
tible, lies at the root of every natural science, of all depart- 
ments of physical knowledge. To suppose that it could 
be destructible, either as to its substance or its forces, 
would be to suppose that its whole present constitution 
could be destroyed ; for pure matter is constituted wholly 
by its rigidly quantitative properties. No hypothesis can 
find a shadow of favor with science to-day, unless it adopt 
the truth of the conservation of all the constituent proper- 
ties of matter. They all remain the same from the begin- 
ning — neither more, nor less, nor different, however many 
their continued changes of mode and process, or changes 
in any of the non-essential elements of being. If any 
property of matter disappears, physicists are bound to 
search for it, and to account for its disappearance ; or at 
least to leave room in any hypothesis which is adopted on 
the subject for a final explanation of the nature of its 
changes and the mode under which it at present exists. 
No thorough student of nature can rest satisfied till he 
has explained the connection between the transmutations 
of all the activities of matter, tracing them through all 
their various modifications. 

We may admit, then, that matter with all its constituent 
properties is indestructible ; that nothing pertaining to 
its constitution is either added to or destroyed. It simply is. 

This far-reaching truth is as much a question of meta- 
physics as of physics. A metaphysicist, Herbert Spencei, 

1 Correlation and Conservation of Forces. — Youmans. 
19 



290 Conservation of Matter and its Properties. 

has shown that the " persistence of force " is a primary 
truth in all philosophy — a truth which transcends all 
demonstration and is " deeper even than definite cognition 
— deep as the very nature of mind." In the language of 
the present essay, it is one of the necessary, fundamental, 
or first truths, which every one must as certainly immedi- 
ately perceive as he must perceive his own existence and 
personal identity. He may not be able to reason about 
either, and if attempting to verify his perceptions, will per- 
haps stumble and doubt the evidence of his own conscious- 
ness ; but they are truths which he always assumes and 
acts upon nevertheless. But I hold that the persistence 
of force alone is not the most fundamental intuitive truth. 
Mind perceives the persistence also of the substance, as 
constituted by forces or coordinated properties. Each 
mind accepts the fact of the existence, persistence, or con- 
servation both of matter and its essential properties. 
Every child, even, instinctively relies on this great, most 
comprehensive truth of science. The steady, unchanging 
existence of matter is the one central point which is above 
and beyond any question of time. It exists in the eternal 
present. Past and future are nothing to it : it was and is, 
then, now, and forever. 

It is not enough, either, to affirm that matter and its 
properties, as a whole, cannot be destroyed. Each atom 
as constituted by its own special properties is equally in- 
destructible. There is evidence that the atom and its 
inherent properties are one and inseparable — one and 
indivisible. Undergoing a variety of modes and combina- 
tions, it is yet conserved, with all its properties, as a dis- 
tinct indivisible atom. Its forces are acted on and react 
again forever, through all possible changes and transfor- 
mations ; for force, as a property, is found to be never 
separated from its own special substance. Each atom or 
molecule of matter, then, in all its entireness of essential 
properties, is indestructible, and must exist while the pres- 
ent constitution of the universe is still maintained. 



IMMORTALITY. 




P F matter and its forces are found to be indestruc- 
tible, is it possible to believe that mind can be 
destroyed ? Mind is, it exists. If it existed merely 



as a resultant of material forces, if it were only the out- 
growth of an organism, then, with the dissolution of the 
organism, it also would fall into nonentity. But if mind 
is itself substance, constituted by its own properties, and 
existing in its own right, then, under the present system 
of things, it cannot be destroyed. Like all essential being 
it must be superior to time, eternal or immortal. 

We have first to settle the question of life. Is it, as we 
have tried to point out, substance allied to its own distinc- 
tive, innate, coordinated sentient properties ? Then life 
cannot, in any sense, be regarded as the opposite of disso- 
lution \ which is what we mean by death as applied to the 
body ; but it is opposed to annihilation or absolute de- 
struction. We have seen that under the present constitu- 
tion of nature annihilation does not and cannot exist \ but 
that every substance with its innate properties is equally 
indestructible. Does life belong to these real existences 
which have received an inherent immutable constitution ? 
Then life cannot become a nonentity. The term death, in 
ordinary usage, does not mean destruction, but decay and 
dissolution. The body dies in the sense that, all the nice 
adjustments of its parts being destroyed, its forces no 
longer work in common : it decays and falls asunder — its 
particles scattered and converted into other modes of being. 
But neither substance nor property is destroyed. There is 
change of adjustments and modes, and a readjustment of 



292 Immortality. 

new phases of things. If a quartz crystal is pulverized 
and scattered far and wide, its destruction as a crystal is 
complete. Nothing short of a miracle could ever re-gather 
all its particles, group them again in precisely the same 
order as before, and thus reunite them in that particular 
crystal. The almost rational coordination of crystallogenic 
forces which coacted in that particular crystalline forma- 
tion, as though with innate intelligence all working toward 
the same end, is presumed to be forever destroyed. In all 
probability just that conjunction of forces will never exist 
again ; but the forces themselves are none of them de- 
stroyed. They all exist still in their own proper substances, 
ready to enter again into any possible number of new 
alliances. 

The analogy between the dissolution of the crystal and 
the dissolution of the body is complete : it is as striking 
as we find the analogy of process to be in the formation 
of the crystal and of the living organism. That conjunc- 
tion of adapted atoms which built up the organism, which 
digested its food, and kept it in continual repair, which 
worked through its brain in thought, and through its arm 
in muscular force — that special cooperative whole is de- 
stroyed, though the atoms themselves are each still un- 
changed in permanent nature. Why should not the sen- 
tient atom be equally conserved ; equally indestructible 
with all the others ? At the dissolution of the body the 
sentient mind is separated from it, but is this mind there- 
fore incapacitated for new alliances of a similar or higher 
type ? Is the mind destroyed, or are its sentient properties 
annihilated, or does it exist still — of rational necessity, 
as part of the present system of things — with its whole 
sentient constitution unchanged ? If each life is an ulti- 
mate atom, constituted by immutable sentient properties, 
as material atoms are constituted by definite unsentient 
properties, then each mind is surely as indestructible as 
each material atom. This is immortality I Life, then, is 



Immortality. 293 

continuous life, immortal life ; and the adjective adds no 
force to the substantive. Life is something superior to 
time — is simple, sentient existence in a perpetual present. 
The experiences which the mind acquires while dwelling 
in its bod}' have no necessary dependence on its relations 
to its present organism. It perceives by direct vision ; and 
whether it perceives through its material eyes, or, if disem- 
bodied, a similar perception were produced through some 
kindred process, is not essential. Perception is an affec- 
tion of the mind obtained through some conjunction with 
the object perceived ; and whether the organism intervenes 
to aid the mental act or otherwise is of no consequence. 
It is only essential that there should be some adequate 
coordination between the perceiving mind and the thing 
perceived. If the perception is presentative, when the 
mind is allied to its organism, there is no reason why 
it should not still perceive presentatively when separated 
from its organism. The same is true of all mental activi- 
ties usually performed in connection with organic func- 
tions. Mind is the self-poised sentient power, whose proper 
experiences are all personal to itself, even when it acts 
through its bodily organs, and is acted upon through them 
by the material world. Because a mind is now coordinated 
with its human organism, and this again with the external 
world, is no reason why the same mind, with its own proper 
innate constitution unchanged, should not hereafter, on 
leaving its organism, enter into new relations with yet 
other elements, and thus continue uninterruptedly in the 
exercise of its own proper activities. When one sees an 
object divided, he immediately cognizes the pure principle 
of divisibility; but if nothing in the material conditions 
represents the principle, then, whether the present organ- 
ism, or indeed any other, intervene between the mind and 
the principle is not important ; and the perceiving power 
may perhaps exercise its proper function under a wide 
variety of conditions, with equal facility. He who adapted 



294 Immortality. 

minds, organisms, and inanimate nature, in all the phases 
of existence to which we now belong, has shown no want 
of resources which should lead us to doubt his ability for 
the future. Unless He has failed utterly at the very point 
where the chief value of life just begins to be appreciated 
by its possessor, He must have prevised adapted condi- 
tions of being, after the separation of the mind from its 
body, so as to secure the highest use of its legitimate 
sentient powers. The negative supposition is wholly in- 
credible and contrary to all analogy. There is no more 
shadow of evidence in favor of the annihilation of sentient 
properties than of any other class of forces in the uni- 
verse ; but, in addition to those which demand the conser- 
vation of merely mechanical force, there are an infinity of 
added reasons why sentient forces should be conserved ! 
The beautiful, rational scheme, embracing sentient exist- 
ence as its crowning glory, would be shorn of all its gran- 
deur, if consciousness were to be dissipated and to end 
with the dissolution of the organism. But this is a con- 
sideration distinct in itself. I wish in the present para- 
graph to show that all the normal powers of any mind are 
legitimately its own, of unchanging constitutional neces- 
sity ; and that so long, therefore, as it exists and can find 
conditions under which it is possible to exercise them, that 
all its experiences must continue to be conscious expe- 
riences — that its activities, whether feelings, thoughts, or 
purposes, must continue to be personal or self-realized 
activities. 

Doubtless mind with its sentient properties may sleep, 
may rest or lie inert for a time, there may be a state of 
mental equilibrium or balanced mental and material forces 
which is total unconsciousness ; but this, from the nature 
of things, can be only temporary. It would seem to be 
quite as likely to occur while the mind is incarnated as in 
any other condition of its being. We are subject to at 
least partial unconsciousness in the state of natural slum- 



Immortality. 295 

ber ; and a patient under the influence of chloroform or 
any other anaesthetic, is apparently totally unconscious. 
The mental and organic forces are not, for the time being, 
in working relations with each other ; so that the body 
may be cut in pieces while the mind has no cognizance of 
the fact. In some of the modes of matter, certain of its 
unsentient forces seem to be wholly inoperative \ but when 
they do act at all, they act always in character. Let us 
grant that mind has also its static phases of existence — 
that it can be even wholly inactive and therefore uncon- 
scious, yet it must be also true, that, in the moment when 
its proper activity recommences, its personal consciousness 
must be again continued. Since all its special properties 
are sentient, while its present constitution is retained, all 
its proper activities must involve a personal consciousness, 
under every possible state of its active existence. When 
the mind leaves the body, therefore, though we can know 
but little concretely of its relations in the future, — we our- 
selves being limited by our own organisms, — yet we may 
be certain, not only that this mind is still conserved with 
all its innate properties, like all other classes of being ; but, 
also, that if its relations allow it any proper activity what- 
ever, it is then in possession of its own personal conscious- 
ness, and must be accumulating new sentient experiences 
continually. Its largely developed sentient powers will be 
able to seek conditions in which it can act. If we concede, 
then, the point that minds are, like matter, indestructible, 
and persist with all their constitutional properties intact, 
we are ready for other considerations bearing upon the 
question of immortality. 

We turn to arguments from the nature and fitness of 
things ; and to various social and moral considerations. 
The whole subject is so important that we maybe justified 
in treating it from every point of view ; since some minds 
are likely to be more impressed by other trains of thought 
than by such reasoning as has just been presented. 



296 Immortality. 

A belief in immortality is so universal that it must have 
originated in the very constitution of the human mind. It 
is adopted under circumstances so diverse, that I can see 
no other way of accounting for it. It cannot be regarded, 
as some suppose, as a truth given exclusively by revela- 
tion • for heathen nations, who lay no claim to a revelation 
upon any subject whatever, also believe in it. All their 
religion is often based upon that belief. They try to pro- 
pitiate their gods, and do voluntary penance to secure 
rewards after death. Every nation, without one exception, 
which can be admitted as such by the careful historian, is 
more or less confessedly occupied with " laying up treas- 
ures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust can corrupt. " 
Nor can a truth so generally accepted be regarded as a 
mere tradition. Mankind do not so unanimously accept 
any doctrine in which they find no evidence of inherent 
truthfulness ; the man himself tries the tradition, and 
accepts or rejects it as he is able, in the face of sufficient 
evidence. It is this very intuitive evidence that I am 
desirous of examining, and testing to the utmost. 

A man's life is himself ; and the one is not without the 
other. He feels this without reasoning about it. It is the 
irrepressible first consciousness : he cannot help the assur- 
ance that he is a veritable living person. The idea of his 
ever losing this life may not occur to him for years. Why 
should it ? It is as foreign to think of losing his life as it 
is to think of losing himself — of being divided or parted 
from himself; for he cognizes his life — his sentient being, 
as inseparable from his true existence-; and he can have 
no thought of ever laying it down till this thought comes 
to him from without. The consciousness of life originates 
within the living soul : it is the idea of death which comes 
wholly from without. This is what is meant by the affir- 
mation that a belief in immortality arises from the mental 
constitution ; for immortality is life and it is nothing more 
than this. It is life, without a cessation of life. The being 



Immortality. 297 

who is conscious of past and present existence can be- 
lieve in future, in unending existence, which is only the 
duration of his present self. It has already endured in 
his consciousness for years ; and it could only be some 
violent outrage to his nature which should suddenly com- 
pel it to cease to exist. He could not believe this possible 
without the strongest external proof. The very thought 
of it is a shock to him : he shrinks back from it, his whole 
nature rises up in rebellion, and he refuses to admit any- 
thing at once so incredible and so undesirable. He cannot 
be conscious of death, of non-existence ; but meantime he 
is conscious of life, of present, actual existence. Can you 
bring any conclusive proof that he will ever cease to be ? 
If not, he will cling to his belief in continuous life. In the 
absence of such proof all nations, heathen and Christian, 
have trusted the internal evidence in favor of immortality. 
The youngest intelligence must perceive the intuitive logic 
which assures him of a sentient, persisting, personal iden- 
tity ; and therefore humanity has asserted its dogma of 
immortality almost universally \ but if it has been its first 
unreflecting and most childish decision, it has been the 
decision also of its wisest and best philosophers ! 

Death, if there be any essential death or destruction of 
the living person, is the encroacher ; whose power to de- 
stroy must be made manifest before we can believe in it. 
Men have reasoned by a false analogy from the dissolution 
of the body to the annihilation of the mind, or at least to 
the destruction of its continuous personal consciousness ; 
but the argument grew up in the speculative era, before 
men saw, intelligently, that all substance and force are 
alike indestructible, while the present constitution of things 
continues. There can be no question now as to whether 
the substance of mind is indestructible, when science has 
settled that everything is quantitatively conserved ; but it 
can hardly be said to have decided that each conscious 
personality is indestructible. On the contrary, it is still 



298 Immortality. 

halting between that opinion and the doctrine that mind 
or sentient experience is only a transient mode of matter, 
and may therefore pass away like other similar modes. It 
is only those who reason and observe — the thinkers 
among the masses of mankind — who are intelligent skep- 
tics as to the future life ; but these have learned to doubt 
also as to the distinct mental individuality of the present 
life. It is as easy to doubt the one as the other, and as 
easy to prove the one as the other. If we cannot believe 
in a persisting personal identity, distinct from the changing 
organism which it inhabits, belief in an indestructible con- 
tinuous life is of course impossible ; but if we admit the 
one, we must concede the other. 

The moral argument in favor of immortality is perhaps 
more convincing than any other. Life is desirable. Sen- 
tient experience, with all its drawbacks of pain and suf- 
fering, is full of general satisfaction. Everybody instinc- 
tively loves life and clings to it. The possessor of sen- 
tient powers is keenly alive to the good they bring him : 
he is able, in a great degree, to appreciate the increasing 
value of his sentient experiences and to desire their con- 
tinuance. Every human soul craves an immortal con- 
scious existence, and must do so, because sentient life has 
been so ordered that it is felt to be intrinsically desirable. 
Apart from the doctrine of endless and irrevocable future 
punishment, every rational being cries out instinctively 
against the blank, black evil of future nonentity, and holds 
up his protest to God himself against it. " I live ! and life 
is good ; then I shall live forever ! Why not? Who shall 
prevent it ? Will the Creator take my life from me ? Then 
why did He give it at all ! He might have prevented my 
existence at first ; but now that He has given it me, and I 
prize it, why should He take it again ? He must have given 
it me because it is good, and if so He will continue that 
good ! " So reasons and protests the intuitive logic of all 
humanity. 



Immortality. 299 

When the cold dogma of annihilated consciousness first 
intrudes itself upon the credence of the philosopher, he 
feels it as the blade of torture severing his dearest hopes. 
He sees it pruning away the earliest loves of the soul, 
and knows that his childhood world of intuitions and 
beautiful undoubting trust, is falling in ruins about him. 
Show me one who has become reconciled to the idea, who 
has become content to cease to be, and I will point to one 
who has suffered what no words can tell of doubt, protest, 
agony, despair. He may turn for remuneration to physi- 
cal science, with all its admirable processes and adapta- 
tions, may go into dream-land as poet, logician, or ideal 
philosopher, may become a humanitarian, a sensualist, or 
a speculator in stocks or dry goods, as his tastes dictate ; 
resolute to find good somewhere ; but at the best his exist- 
ence is to him life with the very essence of life omitted. 
He has need to be a man of resources, if he would find 
social existence in its present stage of development even 
bearable. Is he to look calmly on suffering, outrage, and 
wrong ? to see myriads of his race doomed from infancy 
to wretchedness, ignorance, hopelessness, and vice, and to 
death with no more of good in store for them ? It is well 
that when one can disbelieve in an immortal life, that he 
must disbelieve also in a free, rational Creator and Or- 
dainer of life, or otherwise he must curse Him to his face, 
arraigning Him for his cruel malevolence. If it is granted 
that neither substance nor force are ever annihilated, then 
the annihilation of a sentient existence would be the most 
utterly monstrous anomaly which could occur in the uni- 
verse ! 

Life, with all its ills, is yet intrinsically good \ with all 
its possibilities of suffering, it has infinitely higher possi- 
bilities of enjoyment. If its sufferings, as I have tried to 
show, react upon it, impelling it ever to higher good, and 
if its ultimate destiny is the attainment of ever increasing 
and nobler enjoyment, then life is the incomparably highest 



300 Immortality. 

boon which it has entered into the heart of man to con- 
ceive. We may well believe that He who gave it to us 
will not take it away again. We desire it above all things, 
as the only basis upon which all other things can be 
brought into our cognizance, and as it is He who made 
this desire the strongest appetency which we can possess, 
we may rely upon the infinite parental tenderness which 
will satisfy the demand. If his arm is not shortened that 
He cannot help, nor his heart hardened that He cannot 
love, then while his resources prove commensurate with 
the existing scheme of things, which He himself has 
ordained ; then while every atom of the clay we walk on, 
of the air we breathe, and of the flesh and blood in our 
own organisms, with all its unchangeable properties, is 
conserved, shall not mind still exist also with its higher 
sentient properties immutable and indestructible ? His 
wisdom, power, and benevolence are our all-sufficient 
guaranty ! But it must be true, also, that all these things 
exist of innate constitutional necessity, and that not one of 
them can be destroyed without the destruction of the 
whole rational fabric — of the whole actualized existing 
universe. We may be content if, so long as the present 
nature of things continues, we too must continue our im- 
mortal life with its unending consciousness ! 





SELFISHNESS IS A QUANTITATIVE VICE. 

IE all possess appetencies for every enjoyment. 
Each mind must desire to possess every possible 
good, every experience which would bring pleas- 
ure to itself; and as this desire is the spontaneous out- 
growth of the mental constitution, it is to be cultivated 
rather than repressed. No appetency should be despised 
or wholly disused ; and yet, when its present gratification 
would run athwart either one's own or his neighbor's best 
interests, obviously, from these manifold relations must 
arise various natural checks to self-indulgence. If, then, 
we could discover the relative value of all appetencies, 
settling everything as between ourselves and others from a 
rational or impersonal stand-point, we should be able to 
settle all the practical questions of social science. 

All sentient experience is qualitative necessarily, even 
when, like pure sensation, it is excited simply by material 
properties ; but the higher qualities of experience, which 
are coordinated with rational principles, being objectively 
qualitative also, excite in us only impersonal or unsel- 
fish sensibilities ; while those experiences which are coor- 
dinated with quantities of all classes, depending upon 
our personal appropriation of these quantities to our own 
ends, and to the consequent exclusion of others, all tend 
directly to selfishness, that is, to the unjust appropriation 
to ourselves of what more properly belongs to others. 
For example, here is a fine apple which would both sat- 
isfy my hunger and gratify my taste, giving me various 
pleasurable sensations ; but if I eat the apple, I destroy 



302 Selfishness is a Quantitative Vice. 

its present mode of being, appropriating its substance and 
properties to my own organism. Very naturally I desire 
the apple ; but my neighbor desires it also ; and we can- 
not both have this identical quantity. Then shall I seize 
it at any cost, and enjoy the good which I covet ? The 
temptation to this is evidently very great. 

Money is the general representative of all those values 
which are closely related to quantity. It can buy almost 
everything which has a substantial existence ; and therefore 
is money desired and sought after as the highest material 
good. Men often become exceedingly unscrupulous as to 
the means by which it is acquired. They are tempted to 
overreach, defraud, or rob others outright, that they them- 
selves may possess this potent symbol of all material 
values. The spirit of fraud is the lust for material things, 
at the expense of others. Theft secretly and meanly ap- 
propriates to itself some quantity which belongs to another. 
Avarice, covetousness, the pride of wealth, of ostentatious 
display in dress or other equipments, the pride of position, 
of power, and of caste, all representing gradations of the 
acquirement of material goods, are as deeply rooted in the 
simply quantitative phases of things, and are as grossly 
material and earth-bound as are the very lowest vices ; 
such as gluttony, drunkenness, unchastity, or any other 
debasement arising from excessive sensual indulgence. 
The grasping spirit is simply a muck-rake for gathering up 
material things ; low and base-born in its nature, it can 
grope only in the dust for the gratification of its desires. 
It knows nothing of qualitative objective values ; but it 
looks only at quantities, ignobly trying to seize all it can 
get. Quantitativeness is the fulcrum for all selfishness ! 
It is the sole law of matter. 

It is a first necessity that every habitually selfish man 
should be low-minded. Since self-seeking is a direct seek- 
ing for only quantitative values, and as these are allied 
only to those lowest appetencies which man shares in* com- 



Selfishness is a Quantitative Vice. 303 

mon with irrational animals and even plants, he goes down 
in feeling to their primitive level ; while his rational pow- 
ers, unused, remain shallow and narrow, as a legitimate 
result. Any life devoted chiefly to amassing simply quan- 
titative values, of whatever class, even if it be regulated 
by the principles of the strictest justice, is yet miserably 
ignoble. All fraud may be ruled out, both in theory and 
practice ; and the man be even rigidly conscientious, yet 
if his chief aim is the accumulation of quantitative things, 
which can pertain to himself alone, he is of the earth, 
earthy. He is reaching after those forms which of neces- 
sity must perish with the using ; and when these are gone 
nothing remains. He must start life over again as a bank- 
rupt. 

All self-seeking in an odious sense, is a seeking after 
quantitative values. The love of power, of strength, of 
knowledge as a means of controlling the forces of matter 
or mind, is the love of that which, if possessed, will give 
precedence over another. It is the selfish abuse of those 
normal appetencies, which, as directly related to material 
things, must appreciate material values. There is nothing 
intrinsically ignoble in our relations to quantities. All 
our appetencies are in themselves desirable and beautiful. 
A pleasant flavor, a delightful scent, a fine dress, or a fast 
horse and handsome carriage, are in themselves unobjec- 
tionable ; and to be sought for according to their relative 
value as compared with other things. It is the elevating 
of material things to an undue rank which is objection- 
able ; for it either diverts too great a share of our own 
energies in the pursuit of them, or it renders us unjust 
and oppressive towards others. Of course, anything which 
can be quantitatively estimated, or in any way so related 
to quantities that its value can be made to depend upon 
them, must come under the strict law of equity or impartial 
justice. The rational mind must weigh all relative values 
impartially, and from a purely rational standpoint, if it 



304 Selfishness is a Quantitative Vice. 

would reason correctly, or act in accordance with the prin- 
ciples of moral order. 

But if it is ignoble habitually to degrade one's self to 
the sphere of quantitative temptations, it is supremely 
base to lead another into the same vices. To educate a 
child to live chiefly through the senses, appreciating only 
the grossest quantitative things, is a shocking perversion 
of one of the most beautiful of moral trusts. A stream 
never rises higher than its fountain, and an unworthy 
parent can hardly be expected to nobly train his children ; 
yet, since he really possesses the highest appetencies, 
though chiefly unexercised, he may raise his children far 
above his own level. Warned by his own disadvantages, 
by his own ignorance, by his own debasement even, and 
the fearful powers of developed evil tendencies, he may, 
and sometimes does, lift his child above all this ; and sur- 
rounding it with better influences, secure to it a better 
development. The careless educator, who is himself ordi- 
narily moral and intelligent, but who yet neglects those 
young beings confided to his guidance, is under the control 
of a far more callous selfishness than the misguided man 
who from his babyhood may have fallen into evil, but who 
would yet tenderly preserve others from the same fate. 
If it be a great wrong to defraud any one of his houses 
or lands, it is incomparably greater to keep him out of a 
part of his birthright as a rational and moral being. 

Excessive personal indulgence is a vile thing. The 
frame of mind which it engenders is radically irrational. 
Everything held up in the light of personal interest, and 
looked at exclusively from one's own stand-point, is stulti- 
fying to the moral sense ; but to lead another into a similar 
frame of mind, and to the indulgence of like propensities, 
is doubly criminal. A social vice is, therefore, immeasur- 
ably worse than a solitary one ; for by degrading another, 
it acts and reacts between the two with a tenfold deba- 
sing force. Viewed in this light, the hail-fellow latitude 



Selfishness is a Quantitative Vice. 305 

of young men at a convivial club is blacker than they 
know ! Each, unwilling to be outdone by his fellows, will 
indulge in excesses of which he would be heartily ashamed 
if he were himself the only witness. All this is strictly 
philosophical. Our social appetencies being largely qual- 
itative, and comparatively above the relations of quantity 
tend always, through reflex influences, to a manifold in- 
crease ; if these, then, are subjected to the dominion of 
the senses, are forced to become the bond-servants of 
quantity, they multiply evil influences \ as they would have 
multiplied good ones if left under the legitimate sway of 
our rational powers. A deliberate seducer may be less 
brutal • yet he is a criminal far more deeply dyed than the 
coarse wretch who could commit a criminal assault. There 
is no gentility in any form of selfishness, however refined 
its assumptions and disguises. Its essential feature is 
robbery of others to enrich one's self; so that it is intrin- 
sically irrational, and in direct violation of all the princi- 
ples of social and moral order. If the reins are once 
given over to sense, all the beauty of upright moral action 
has departed ; and the most fastidious wrong-doer is 
brought down to the level of the most vulgar. He may 
seem to be floating gently out with the current ; but he 
will soon be adrift and rudderless on a wide ocean of 
surging passions. The sinfulness of sin has been much 
dwelt upon ; but the degradation of it is a much more 
revolting feature, and may well warn off one who is 
pleasantly coqueting with wrong-doing, from its more 
disastrous stages. The daughters of the horse-leech 
always cry, Give ! give ! 
20 



UNSELFISHNESS IS A QUALITATIVE 
VIRTUE. 



SIURE qualitative values are immeasurable by quan- 
titative standards. Every act of simple thought, 
whether percept or concept, is one and indivisi- 
ble ; but the rational idea about which it is employed is 
of such a nature that it may be possessed by hundreds of 
minds at the same moment — that is, the objective of all 
qualitative values is wholly impersonal, — is some kind 
of pure rational principle actual in things or possible in 
conception. It may belong to each of the hundred or 
more persons in all its entireness, and yet no one will be 
the poorer for his neighbor's possessions. Thus an apple, 
whose quantitative properties one alone can appropriate, 
has also purely qualitative properties, which many may 
possess. It is a beautiful growth ; we admire its form and 
color, and it gives us pleasure merely to see it as it hangs 
in its red and russet beauty amid green leaves. It is per- 
fectly unnecessary to monopolize this beauty to enjoy it; 
for it is realized in the apple ; so that any number of other 
persons similarly related to it may perceive it at the same 
instant, without in the least degree diminishing our enjoy- 
ment. I have a divine right to possess all the truth, all the 
beauty, all the excellence, there is in the whole universe — 
if I infringe no quantitative law thereby ; and my posses- 
sion can rob no one else, for every one is alike entitled 
to the whole, if he but knows how to attain it. All pos- 
session of objective quality is simply appreciation of it — 
it never monopolizes. 

Indeed, the beauty of the apple would be far more en- 



Unselfishness is a Qualitative Virtue, 307 

joyable if a friend stood with me to admire it. What 
landscape is not doubled in interest if there are two to 
rejoice in it ; or what truth that is not more prized by our- 
selves, if we find that it is also valued by others ? One 
therefore, may be greatly the richer for giving all that he 
has of the pure objective qualities of things to his appre- 
ciating neighbors. Each, with his own personal powers 
coordinated with these rational values, will almost certainly 
perceive yet other relations, draw yet other deductions 
and conclusions, and be only too eager to return him in 
kind, treasure which he might otherwise never have pos- 
sessed. Selfishly withholding here would tend to poverty ; 
but freely giving returns him his own again with interest. 
All qualitative action and reaction is important in its work- 
ing ; for it is infinitely more munificent than the measure 
for measure results of quantitative law. That gives as it 
receives \ this returns a hundredfold ! The more persons 
to whom one can give any rational truth the better • since, 
not only does the giver lose nothing himself, and yet multi- 
ply the value of the knowledge each time, but the mental 
discipline which the truth gives, and the social stimulus 
which it becomes to every mind thus socially and ration- 
ally coordinated with it, are so great, that untold related 
discoveries somewhere in the vast field of universal coor- 
dinations are inevitable. The great body of natural science 
as it now exists among men, is a wonderful illustration of 
the proverb, "There is that giveth and yet increaseth." 
Each new discoverer records the fact which he himself 
finds \ other hundreds receive it, test it, add to it, follow out 
its relations, group it anew in most unexpected categories ; 
and hand it back to its original possessor incalculably 
increased in value. Thus the work goes on ! If each pos- 
sessor of the rational principles of things should monopo- 
lize his treasure, as the owner of material values does, there 
would be but a sorry pittance for any one. Even if each 
learner were forced to commence at the beginning, dis- 



308 Unselfishness is a Qualitative Virtue. 

covering everything for himself, we should be little farther 
advanced to-day than the Bushmen of South Africa. Has 
not giving, then, in this mental world which is concerned 
with the rational qualities of things, returned us even a 
hundred million fold ? It has created all our arts and 
sciences, our improvements, our inventions, our comforts 
and luxuries — everything beyond the barest necessaries 
of life which we enjoy in common with the animals. The 
body of well-tested science is already so immense that no 
one lifetime will suffice to master it ; so that we shall all 
be forced to carry over our studies into another condition 
of being. The rational principles of all sciences, physical, 
intellectual, and moral, are thus found to be coordinated 
in all their relations ; giving us their ever-repeated testi- 
mony that One Beneficence created and coordered them 
all. 

Narrow-minded persons have sought preeminence by 
attempting to keep knowledge as an exclusive possession 
for the favored few. Tyranny and oppression have feared 
always to educate the masses whom they seek to control, 
and this is precisely because they seek control of a monop- 
olizing character. They apparently confound the nature 
of qualitative and quantitative values. Because nothing 
pertaining to the latter can be possessed by more than 
one person at the same time, they unconsciously degrade 
the former to the same necessity, in their thought. The 
result is a niggardliness of sentiment which is not only 
unphilosophical in theory, but is incalculably pernicious in 
practice. It is extending the mantle of selfishness, which 
even the utmost greed should widen only far enough to 
cover all material values and their immediate relations. 
If the lust for over-reaching is contemptible even in the 
province where measure for measure is the only law of 
equity, it is most pitiable in the domain where to give is 
to receive again so much more abundantly. It becomes a 
ghastly force when seen to be thus palpably over-reaching 



Unselfishness is a Qualitative Virtue. 309 

itself. In this light, nothing seems more hopelessly be- 
sotted than all self-seeking at another's expense. 

The legitimate tendency of the whole constitution of a 
rational mind is directly towards all unselfishness. Its 
social appetencies are all perpetually proclaiming the one 
great truth : it is better to give than to receive ! Every one 
knows that to share a pleasure with a friend is to heighten 
the zest with which we ourselves partake of it. Who would 
enjoy a pleasure excursion so well alone as with a few 
valued companions ? Many delightful experiences would 
entirely change their character, almost wholly losing their 
relish, if we were compelled to accept them in miserly 
isolation. What artist could ever have created his grand 
masterpiece if he positively knew that he only in all the 
world would ever appreciate its beauties. Every good 
author probably enjoys and prizes his own work more than 
any one else ever will ; yet could he plod on so steadily, 
or with a fraction of the same thoroughness and effective- 
ness, through years of unremitted toil, if he had no hope 
that others should one day recognize and share with him 
the value of his work ? Humboldt could never have lived 
in his " Cosmos," giving it the best love of his eighty or 
ninety years, if he had had no friends to enjoy with him 
his researches at every step, and no appreciating public to 
accept his munificent legacy to science. No one can 
imagine Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, or Mrs. Stowe as de- 
liberately sitting down to write Pickwick, Jane Eyre, and 
Uncle Tom, merely as a personal treat to themselves. 
The delicious stimulus of social sympathy is needful to 
quicken even genius in putting forth its best efforts. In 
their normal condition all social appetencies are eminently 
unselfish and ennobling — the true stimulants to all laud- 
able ambition. 

The eagerness with which a little child runs to its parent 
or its playmate in the importunate desire to share all its 
simple pleasures, presents the most unsophisticated ex- 



3io Unselfishness is a Qualitative Virtue. 

ample of the legitimate increase of pleasure to one's self 
by giving to others. So long as the good is purely quali- 
tative, or as there is so much in quantity as to suggest no 
considerations of self-denial, a very young child never 
wishes to do anything alone ; but once let him realize 
that to give his cake or his ripe peaches to his playmate is 
to be deprived of them himself, and you will see him 
stealing into a corner, to slyly munch his tidbits, with a 
zeal worthy of any miser. The little animal in him, un- 
checked by his yet undeveloped rational powers, impels 
him to adopt the most obvious " principle of grab." Thus 
all our social instincts, when degraded into the bond ser- 
vice of any form of sensual vice, become, like all other best 
things, the most grossly despicable. 

There is a natural hierarchy in all the qualities of sen- 
tient good. Even the lowest is good ; but there is a long 
series of better and better, till we arrive at the best. These 
relative values differ intrinsically ; so that we have only to 
contrast them one with another in order to decide on their 
relative merits. It is not a matter of indifference whether 
one remains ignorant and debased all his life or whether 
he learns to use his rational and moral powers ; thus mak- 
ing the most of his higher rather than of his lower nature. 
He owes it to himself to make his noblest appetencies his 
dominant ones ; though he can wholly neglect none with 
impunity, because his whole nature is coordinated with 
them all in a general symmetry. But if a man existed 
alone in the universe, with the same nature that he now 
has, he would yet owe certain duties to himself. He would 
be bound to develop his powers in the utmost harmony, 
and to increase his own happiness. He would be bound 
to maintain his own self-respect ; to meet his own self- 
approval. Do you ask to whom he would be thus bound ? 
Of course to himself, if there were no one else. He 
would be bound to his own nature to develop it in a 
knowledge of the principles of things, that he might secure 



Unselfishness is a Qualitative Virtue. 3 1 1 

to it its best good. If he were to study the physical world 
and to master its properties and laws, delving into its mys- 
teries and unraveling its secrets, his soul would steadily 
exult in its acquirements just as the myriads of men do 
to-day. It would acquire power over nature just as men 
do now. This isolated, sole intelligence, if it were to live 
long enough, might in time acquire all the knowledge 
which has actually been acquired by associated humanity. 
It might also subject the elements, making them its ser- 
vants ; it might ride up and down the universe in solitary 
state, with the steam or even the lightning harnessed to 
its car, and it might make the world more and more beau- 
tiful — varying the order of events and producing desirable 
results through the agency of its own rational causality. 

All this would surely be better for the poor lone being 
than to sit down in inglorious self-indulgence. It would 
be better than over-feeding upon dainties. Because these 
intellectual pursuits are intrinsically more noble than mere 
sensations, it would be vastly better for the poor solitary 
to discipline both his body and his mind to the utmost 
perfection ! It would be base and contemptible to lie 
down tamely with the brutes, becoming one of them ; or 
to live like a savage in filth, ignorance, and self-neglect. 

The laws of fitness, of right, and duty to himself grow 
out of the nature of even the isolated being. His intel- 
lect is intrinsically superior to his body \ it can discrimi- 
nate between the class of goods which he is capable of 
enjoying, and guide him to the highest possible happiness 
under his isolated circumstances. Do you doubt whether 
it would be better to elevate himself by knowledge and by 
judicious and conscientious subjugation of all his passions, 
appetites, indolent and unworthy tendencies, and every 
mere present indulgence ; which would enervate his body, 
pull down his manhood, and lessen his strength, and his 
uprightness of character ? It would be better to consti- 
tute himself the rational monarch of his universe, than to 



312 Unselfishness is a Qualitative Virtue. 

allow himself to live the mere victim of circumstances, 
like everything else around him. The laws of his being 
are within himself; if he obeys them he will rise towards 
Godhead, if he disobeys he will fall to the dust ; for his 
only salvation is in making his rational powers the guide 
of his whole conduct. 

The laws of our being are also within ourselves ; and 
they carry within them the same rewards and the same 
penalties. Every rational element of things is so intrinsi- 
cally higher than every other, that it has power to attract us 
continually into appreciation of its merits, to elevate us to 
its own level ; lifting us out of our narrow personality into 
the contemplation and the application of all the coordi- 
nated principles of the true, the beautiful, and the good. 
A truly rational being becomes perforce unselfish • for the 
interests of others necessarily hold as high a place in his 
perceptions as do his own. They are as intrinsically valu- 
able as his own, and he sees this. His appetencies for 
the divinely constituted social and moral order yield to 
him so much more beautiful compensations than any pos- 
sible gratification at the expense of another, that he is 
naturally led out into unselfishness, almost without the 
exercise of any will of his own. When he finds that all 
his best good, when shared with others, is also increased 
to himself, it can but win him into an attitude of social 
benignity \ and like begets like, as truly in the moral as in 
the material world ! His influence will be contagious, and 
men who have rational and social appetencies like his own, 
will all tend to become magnanimous like himself. All 
those appetencies which are allied to quantity may also be 
freely exercised, since an adequate supply exists for every 
need. 

A true discipline must consist not merely in pitting 
one class of instincts against another, thus developing and 
giving strength to the nobler, as is sometimes attempted ; 
but one should be made to comprehend in theory, and 



Unselfishness is a Qualitative Virtue. 313 

gradually habituated to apply in practice, the principles 
of justice to all quantitative values ; and of benevolence and 
good-will to all qualitative ones. The law of justice is the 
outgrowth of all quantitative natures and relations, and 
must be rigidly applied to one's practical every-day affairs ; 
while the corresponding principle of benevolence is the 
outgrowth of qualitative natures and relations, and ma} 
rule supreme in the coordered realm of rational being. 
The two also are coordinated, working cooperatively under 
the system of universal order, while the innate supremacy 
of the latter may often beautifully enable us to elevate 
justice into the domain of love ; finding that it is often 
better to give than to keep even in material values. Self- 
sacrifice meets always with its own beautiful rewards. 
Self-approval, and the approval of every rational mind, is 
better than any quantitative va^ae. Ye have heard that it 
hath been said, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate 
thine enemy: But I say unto you, Love your enemies, 
bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, 
and pray for them which despitefully use you and perse- 
cute you ; that ye may be the children of your Father 
which is in heaven : for he maketh his sun to rise on the 
evil and on the good, and sendeth his rain on the just and 
on the unjust." Thus would He win us all to the practice 
of a beneficence like his own ! The aegis of unselfishness 
is broad enough to cover all values, even the most material. 
As selfishness draws everything down into its own dark 
and narrow pits, so unselfishness elevates everything to its 
own mountain heights. The one is the vice of a narrow- 
minded greed ; the other a rational virtue which has learned 
to gauge all social values, applying the innate principles 
of things to their outgrowing practical relations. The one 
is blind, irrational instinct, struggling to circumvent social 
equity and social love ; the other is the social and moral 
appetency which is able freely and intelligently to group 
all interests in one indivisible unity. 



LAW AND ITS SANCTIONS. 




with 



LL Divine law is one and harmonious, whether it 
be a law of physical or of mental nature ; for the 
same creative Mind originated and enacted it, 
all its manifold coordinations. A law of matter is 



an expression of the rigidly quantitative modes in which 
nature exists and acts. Such laws are, therefore, unvary- 
ing or uniform in their action under like conditions. Since 
they are merely statements of nature's quantitative modes, 
they are necessarily most rigidly accurate mathematical 
statements. On this subject there can be no difference of 
opinion • but it is not, perhaps, equally evident to all, that 
mental laws are also nothing but the expression of exist- 
ing mental facts — that they are simply condensed state- 
ments of the principles of mental action. Using the term 
mental in this its most comprehensive sense, as covering 
all sentient nature, and including both intellectual and 
moral facts, I mean, of course, by principles of mental 
action^ the principles according to which minds of all 
classes, whether irrational or rational, have been consti- 
tuted to exist and act. These principles I hold to be as 
definitely fixed, and as continuously operative in the uni- 
verse, as are any of the laws of physical action. 

We are not to conceive of the Great Moral Lawgiver 
as, first, having withdrawn apart from his subjects and 
devising his moral statutes ; then, like our human law- 
givers, coming forward and publishing his code, with all 
its attached penalties. On the contrary, when He created 
his subjects, He did this by giving them mental and moral 



Law and its Sanctions. 315 

constitutions coordinated with the laws or rational princi- 
ples by which they were to be governed. The principles 
being devised in the Creative Thought, the natures were 
constituted in accordance with these principles. The 
simply quantitative, unsentient natures of material atoms 
were constituted according to quantitative or mathematical 
principles ; sentient but irrational natures were constituted 
according to sentient or qualitative rational principles, 
coordinated with mathematical ones — all alike incompre- 
hensible to the irrational natures themselves, yet made the 
laws of theii being and action nevertheless ; and sentient 
rational natures were constituted according to sentient 
rational principles coordinated also with quantitative or 
mathematical principles \ but all alike comprehensible to 
these rational natures, and existing for them as the estab- 
lished rules of life and conduct. The rational principles 
of the universe are thus many and various ; but all harmo- 
nious and cooperative. 

These rational principles are all realized in things. So 
far as the scheme of matter permits, they are applied or 
incarnated in matter ; and so far as mind will allow, they 
are realized in mind ; but the principles being more com- 
prehensive than the natures constituted by them, cannot 
always receive a literal embodiment ; and yet a rational 
mind is able to discover them as operative and controlling 
influences in the general processes of creation. Thus math- 
ematical principles are not all literally embodied in things, 
though all things are created according to their laws ; and 
Time and Space are not in existences or their changes ; 
but all existences and changes are in time and space. 
Gravity, on the other hand, seems to be a universal innate 
property of all substance ; and the laws of gravity are the 
laws under which substances move or are mutually drawn 
together by this property. 

A mind endowed with rational powers is simply a mind 
adapted to perceive, comprehend, and adopt pure rational 



316 Law and its Sanctions. 

principles. Human powers are adequate to perceive all 
the various classes of principles, apparently, which per- 
tain to one's own well-being and to his various coordina- 
tions with other beings. Possibly he may hereafter even 
fathom all the laws of the Universe ; for his incapacities 
arise, it would seem, not so much from his perceptive 
powers themselves, as from the amount of aid given him 
by his material organism. As soon as man had invented 
the telescope, his mind was able to use it in obtaining a 
knowledge of remote worlds which were entirely shut out 
from him before ; and when he had constructed the micro- 
scope, he opened up a new world about which hitherto he 
had never even dreamed. So when he has won to himself 
a new and finer organism, there may be no limit to his 
perceptive abilities. Now he is limited everywhere by his 
standard of spatial measures, and whatever is too far off 
or too near, too large or too small, he can only speculate 
about, but cannot directly perceive. He does not even 
know assuredly whether or not there be any inorganic 
kingdom ; or whether every mineral atom may not be 
itself constituted from innumerable infinitesimal organ- 
isms. 

But profound as his ignorance is in some directions, his 
knowledge may be clear and distinct enough concerning 
other matters. He can comprehend both the principles 
of justice and of benevolence, and need be in no more 
doubt as to the laws of impartial equity and right, than he 
is as to the fundamental principles of pure mathematics. 
The application of moral laws, also, aside from selfish or 
too strongly personal desires, is no more difficult than 
practical arithmetic ; and if men, by long study, can 
become practical surveyors and astronomers, by the same 
kind of diligent application they can become practical 
moralists. Unfortunately the delusion that the moral code, 
unlike all other systems of principles, was to be studied 
not in moral natures and their coordinations, but was to 



Law and its Sanctions. 317 

be sought outside, through expounders and interpreters, 
has occasioned a wide-spread doubt as to whether social 
and moral laws do really and unchangeably exist in things 
as absolutely as do physical laws ; and whether the penal- 
ties for their violation are alike certain and irremediable. 

There can exist only two classes of laws. The one 
class is inherent in the nature of things ; it is made up of 
the innate principles of the whole rational constitution of 
the Universe. 

The other class of laws is factitious and arbitrary ; they 
are rules made and announced to meet special exigencies, 
or to protect the public and promote the general weal by 
particular enactments, to which are also attached special 
penalties. They may be at any time promulgated as laws, 
and at any time abolished, as seems best according to the 
best judgment of the law-maker. 

To this latter class belong all human laws ; and to the 
former, as I believe, belong all of God's laws. 

Thus the law, or coordination of things, which requires 
a human being to breathe and eat, under penalty of death, 
belongs to the class of natural and inalienable principles. 
His body must breathe and receive nourishment, or die ; 
because this is the only mode by which any body can be 
built up or sustained ; and if you set aside the law, you 
must set aside the very essence of all physical being, not 
only, but of mental being also, which is coordinated with 
the physical. Again, the law of justice which requires 
that one man shall not defraud another, has also its in- 
herent penalties. Justice, as he himself perceives, is a 
true principle, which no moral being should ever violate ; 
therefore if he commits an unjust act, he degrades his 
rational and moral nature into the service of his irrational 
instincts. Of course he loses his self-respect, and the 
respect of every other rational being who is cognizant of 
the act. This penalty cannot be remitted without destroy- 
ing either the principles of morality or the moral natures 
which appreciate these principles. 



D 



iS Law and its Sanctions. 



The penalties of all factitious or arbitrary laws may be 
at any time remitted. The originator of the law attaches 
just such reward or penalty as he sees fit ; for there is no 
necessary relation between the law and its sanction, or 
between the law and the subject who is required to obey 
the law. At one time the law may fine a man ten dollars 
for driving over a covered bridge faster than a walk ; the 
next month the penalty may be made five dollars, and a 
year afterwards it may be ten days' imprisonment for the 
same offense. The penalty, also, need not necessarily be 
enforced. If a man in a light carriage should drive never 
so rapidly across the bridge to save himself from being 
run down by a pair of unmanageable horses attached to a 
lumbering stage-coach, no one would dream of exacting 
the penalty. Or, if the son of a poor widow deserved the 
penalty — if he had driven furiously across the bridge in 
mere wantonness, yet it is possible, that, in considera- 
tion of the mother's dependence on the earnings of her 
son, this might decide the humane executors of the law 
for once to dismiss the youth with a reprimand. Or, 
another might voluntarily pay the fine, or suffer imprison- 
ment for him ; and the court might accept the substitute 
in the place of the youth who had incurred the penalty for 
himself. It is evident, then, that all penalties attached to 
factitious or arbitrary laws may be remitted, at the option 
of the proper authorities. Laws which require an execu- 
tor to enforce them are not necessarily enforced ! 

As all human laws are factitious, and may have their 
sanctions remitted, we have reasoned, as it seems to me, 
from these to the inherent constitutional laws of Nature. 
Human laws are often valuable, and one would not depre- 
ciate the dignity which they have acquired in the eyes of 
men, or diminish the reverence with which they are regarded 
among us, who are eminently a law-abiding people ; but as 
well might one compare a living child to a wax-doll, or Niag- 
ara to one of its own stereoscopic likenesses, as a law of im- 



Law and its Sanctions. 319 

mutable Nature to a law of changing circumstances. The 
very term law has become a misrepresentation of the prin- 
ciple which it is intended to represent. The rewards and 
penalties of Divine Law are as really a necessary part of 
the nature of things as the laws themselves ; and can be 
no more changed or destroyed without disturbance or de- 
struction to the whole coordinated system ! Doubtless the 
power which could establish a certain system of coopera- 
tive principles, might afterwards destroy the same ; but 
where would be the motive ? Neither could He destroy so 
essential a part of the system as that which pertains to the 
nature of law and its sanctions, without destruction to the 
whole fabric ! Practically, we may conclude, therefore, 
that the penalty to any law, physical, intellectual, or moral, 
will never be remitted. 

If one cuts off his right hand, it is not restored again ; if 
he puts out his eyes, he is left sightless as long as he lives ; 
if he besots himself with drink, he becomes, for the time, a 
madman or an imbecile ; or if he wrongs his fellows, he 
carries about the soil of evil-doing in his soul. The burned 
ringer pains, whether it belongs to a dove-eyed child or a 
blear-eyed man ; and the cut finger bleeds, whether cut by 
accident or design. If the system seems severe, we have 
but to remember that its chief aim is not cure, but preven- 
tion. When the little child tosses painfully on its bed of 
fever, it seems difficult for finite tenderness to look up 
trustingly to the All-Father, believing that He watches the 
little sufferer with boundless compassion. The piteous 
baby-moan smites us to the heart. We would so gladly 
give a portion of our own cool life-blood to soothe its hot 
little veins ; would so gladly suffer in its stead ; and God, 
who is so powerful, seems pitiless. The heart is tempted 
to cry out : " He could spare it, but He will not ! " No, He 
will not ! His wisdom is too wise and his compassion too 
all-embracing to set aside the very being and constitution 
of all things to spare this one little sufferer ; and to its 



o 



20 Law and its Sanctions. 



own hurt ! Shall He dispense with his salutary thunder 
storm, least some one, with his self-responsible freedom of 
action and of locomotion, should put himself in a position 
to be smitten with its lightning ? Or shall He destroy the 
freedom of the man's soul forever, for the sake of saving 
his perishable body for a day ? Even we ourselves are too 
far-seeing to dispense with our steamboats and railroads 
because of the frightful accidents which they incidentally 
occasion. 

God never remits a penalty, whether it is incurred by 
guilt or innocence ; by ignorance or willfully, with wide 
open eyes. A murderer may deeply repent the murder, 
but the life of his victim is not thereby restored. If, from 
the depths of his remorse, a self-denying purpose spring 
up in his soul ; and, seeing that it is useless to live lament- 
ing the past, which he cannot undo, he lives to make 
reparation for his fault, and to elevate others and himself 
to nobler deeds, then God co-works with him ; not by 
absolving him from the consequences of his fault, but by 
aiding him to bring forth better fruits meet for repentance. 
This, as I understand it, is His forgiveness ; and it is 
all the forgiveness which He has to bestow. If a parent 
has ruined his child by neglect or evil training, though he 
may since have repented of it in dust and ashes, guiding 
all his younger children in wisdom and goodness, yet in so 
far as he was guilty of the ruin of that one, it must be for- 
ever true that it was he who caused those bitter conse- 
quences. He need not continually upbraid his present 
self — that would imply that he was still in fault, and per- 
petually recommitting the wrong. On the contrary, he is 
doing all that in him lies to counteract the evil long since 
produced ; but no one can take from him the authorship 
of his fault, nor can assume for him the consciousness of 
having committed it ! The whole nature of sin is such 
that it is impossible to save the sinner from the effects of 
his sin, while he still persists in sinning ; and for a like 



Law and its Sanctions. 321 

reason it is impossible for another to assume those effects 
for him, even after he has stopped sinning. He himself, 
and every generous and good mind everywhere, may and 
must work together to undo and counteract those effects, 
if they would see good prevail over evil ; but no one can, 
in the nature of the case, take either his transgression or 
its outgrowing necessary effects, either from him or for him. 
There is forgiveness in that there is love and co?npassion for 
him in his repentance ; but there can be no remission of 
innate consequences. Nothing flowing from the transgres- 
sion of any natural law can be remitted without setting 
aside also the law itself, which would be setting aside a 
part of the rational constitution of the universe. Deity is 
not, therefore, to be regarded as implacable in his anger 
against the evil doer ! On the contrary, even the penalties 
of broken law, inevitable as they really are, are yet better 
for the transgressor than any remission ; and Divine love 
is more manifest in establishing these painful effects, than 
it would be in taking them all upon himself, even if that 
were possible under the present system. He chasteneth 
whom He loveth. 

Even the innocent must bear the unvarying penalties of 
broken law ; and broken not by themselves, but by others. 
An intemperate father maims his little son in the frenzy 
of intoxication, and the innocent child suffers excrucia- 
tingly at the time and must hobble about on his crutches a 
poor lame man all his days ; or a whole family suffer to 
the very soul's quick through the ruin and shame of a be- 
loved daughter of the household. A portion of this suf- 
fering may be factitious — the results of the unjust preju- 
dices of society, ready to brand innocence with a disgrace 
merited only by the guilty ; but another portion grows 
necessarily from the close social tie, which binds the 
wronged and the wrong-doer inseparably, compelling them 
to enjoy or suffer in common. All humanity is bound to- 
gether by these potent sympathies which make the weal or 
21 



J 



22 Law and its Sanctions. 



woe of one, the common heritage of all. Our bodies 
must either have been made so that they could neither be 
maimed, killed, nor otherwise hurt ; our minds incapable 
of emotions, either pleasant or painful, all our powers un- 
sentient, and therefore without rational perceptions or 
volitions, and unable either to distinguish or to choose 
between good and evil — in other words, we must have 
remained without life and its sentient experiences ; or else 
suffering must result from everything which violates the 
conditions of our well-being. 

The innocent suffer, but they are never punished ! 
While guilt says, " I deserve it, I caused it, and the pen- 
alty is just," innocence, bearing up its sufferings to heaven, 
can be assured of nothing but the tenderest compassion. 
A good conscience can transform all evil, pain of body, 
sorrow of soul, and even the sharpest temptations, into 
elements of good ; helping forward its own moral advance- 
ment. This is the natural effect of any suffering which 
we bear for another ; bearing it worthily, as only rational 
and moral beings may. Years ago I met a little child in 
the Randall's Island hospital who had long been there a 
confirmed invalid from early exposure, want, and hered- 
itary disease. She had been neglected and forsaken by 
her intemperate mother, who had visited her only two or 
three times in as many years. The doctor had just am- 
putated her limb ; after waiting since the time of her first 
coming, lest he should give her needless suffering while she 
was so almost hopelessly ill. When the operation was 
over, the little creature looked up into his face with a smile 
of the most touching gratitude, and said, "Thank you, 
Doctor ! You will tell mother that you have cut off my 
leg, wont you ? She will be so glad ! " I have never seen 
expression on human face so full of heavenly beauty, 
pathos, and love, as that in the countenance of this mother- 
forsaken, homeless little girl. Strangers cared for her, 
little invalids lay all about her, and her smile rested on 



Law and its Sanctions. 323 

one and another sometimes with an expression of almost 
maternal pity. So God " giveth to his beloved rest " — 
peace in the midst of suffering, and exaltation of soul 
through suffering ! 

The only fearful evil is that the innocent so often con- 
sent to be contaminated and debased by the crimes of 
others. Little children, reared amidst ignorance and vice 
from babyhood, feed greedily upon the evil influences with 
which they are nourished from the cradle \ and men and 
women not only follow the lead of their betrayers, but 
they often pass beyond them into yet lower depths of in- 
iquity. Time in this world is not long enough to right 
such wrongs ! That penalty of evil doing, unrecognized by 
him on whom it falls, an increasing stultification of his 
better nature, forever haunts his footsteps like a black 
shadow of himself. One enduring the worst of retribu- 
tion, but knowing it not, stands as a warning to others 
who can see the desolation of his soul better than he him- 
self. He is a living monument, illustrating the ruin which 
is allied to all transgression ! If the lesson is fearful, yet 
it is just, and salutary both to the beholder and the suf- 
ferer. Though the latter knows nothing of the immeas- 
urable width of the gulf between himself and the good 
and great, yet he sees that there is such a gulf, and that 
he is on the wrong side of it. If anything will lead him to 
ask after causes, and consent to renounce his degredation, 
it is this. 

All who have aided in his debasement see their own 
crimes mirrored in their victim. Can a father who has 
trained his child to unworthy pursuits see the dark soul 
looking out upon him reproachfully, without sometimes 
awaking to the anguished thought, " I have done it ! 
I have done it ! " Is there comfort in that, think you ? 
Can a man look upon the wreck of womanhood, standing 
abject and degraded before him, and say, " I caused it ! " 
and then sleep sweetly upon the reflection ? Not so ! 



324 Law and its Sanctions. 

God is the creator of men and not of demons. People 
do things from selfish and thoughtless impulses, from the 
depths of blind debasement into which they have them- 
selves fallen, from revenge or hate, which seem at the 
moment as sweet as they are fierce, and from many other 
motives no higher than these ; but pure^^^bolism is not 
one of the attributes of humanity. T^qHRfcas no one 
can choose misery for its own sake, bee ^Je ne loves 
misery, so no one can choose to entail it upon others for 
the love of seeing them miserable. If the desolation 
which he has wrought in the lives of others cannot arouse 
his better nature, then nothing on earth can do it. He 
must wait ! But so surely as he and they all have immor- 
tality before them, the moral lessons so terribly enforced 
must be learned at last ; for the appetency for acquiring 
them is inwrought in their coordinated moral constitu- 
tions. It is because moral right is intrinsically better than 
wrong, that rational beings must ultimately choose it ! 

All humanity suffers loss or gain in the woe or weal of 
its humblest member. " Bear ye one another's burdens ! " 
is the inwrought constitutional requirement of Him who 
coordinated all rational natures. Go labor for the worst 
and vilest, willingly and cheerfully, reaping an abundant 
recompense ; or by the eternal laws of humanity, their 
burdens must be laid upon you, to your hurt ! There is 
no perfect rest to a good and noble nature till the heavy 
chains of society are lifted up from the weary shoulders of 
the weak, whether wronged or wrong-doers, and until all 
men are taught to walk in just and upright ways, and to 
inherit the birthright awaiting them as moral and rational 
beings. The way of the transgressor is hard enough. 
Show him the character of his guilt, and the nature of its 
penalties, and make him realize the infinite loving-kind- 
ness of his Creator. He may still refuse to improve, but 
why should he ? Mind has been coordinated with mo- 
tives. 



Law and its Sanctions. 325 

Though no penalty of broken law will ever be remitted, 
yet if in this world or the next there is true contrition for 
past wrong-doing, every just man, and therefore, surely, 
Deity also, must be ready with sympathy for the contrite, 
and aid in his future well-doing. But just as one who 
has lived all his days in vice and ignorance, when he does 
reform, is far below a noble philanthropist like John How- 
ard, who has spent his life in doing good ; so may no one 
hope here or hereafter ever to overtake lost opportunities. 
If he has voluntarily gone back along the road of prog- 
ress, just so much time has been lost irretrievably. 

Here arises the important question, Are the penalties 
attached to constitutional law always or indeed ever com- 
mensurate with the desert of the wrong-doer ? Who shall 
answer in the affirmative ? One can find no worthy reason 
why in constituting the present scheme of moral govern- 
ment, it should have been determined to attach the ut- 
most penalty which the crime deserves. What worthy end 
would be attained by this ? Far be it from a beneficent 
mind to say, " Let men suffer because they deserve it." 
There is in such a spirit a spice of human vindictiveness. 
It is hot with the flavor of headlong revenge and retalia- 
tion — impulses as blind and irrational as that which 
possesses the mad bull. We may well infer that no other 
penalties are affixed to broken law than such as must fol- 
low inevitably from the established nature and relations of 
things, and that the whole question of merited punishment 
and desert was left out of view. The law of justice requires 
that no injustice shall be done ; but it does not forbid the 
conferring of the free gifts of benevolence and universal 
good-will ! 

Yet there is a moral sense in us which requires that an 
unjust or evil-doing man shall be awakened to a full sense 
of the real blackness of his offense. What we call justice 
is sometimes the committing of a second wrong in the 
irrational expectation that this will somehow right the first, 



326 Law and its Sanctions. 

for two wrongs often make one right in Anglo-Saxon mo- 
rality, just as two negatives make an affirmative in Anglo- 
Saxon grammar. But in the science of universal morals, 
right and wrong are not convertible terms. 

It must satisfy every instinct of moral justice to have 
the culprit fully appreciate the real nature of his crime 
and of its outflowing consequences. I cannot see that it 
would make any one morally better to inflict upon him 
some horrible retaliation, or that the spectators, if they 
had rational and social instincts, would be either edified 
or benefited by the spectacle ; but if the criminal could 
be made to look into the very eye of his crime, until he 
felt its meanness and realized the ignoble depths to which 
he himself must have fallen before he could be guilty of 
it ; and if he could be made to feel the moral reprobation 
not only of the best and noblest, but also of those as self- 
ish and vile as himself, this universal condemnation of 
his course would be enough ! This I believe to be the 
true end of all Providence ; and the true legitimate penalty 
for all willful and deliberate wrong-doing. Can one ask 
for the offender a keener or a more terrible punishment 
than this ? — a punishment which sooner or later, too, is 
inevitable, if we are to continue to be rational and moral 
beings forever. 

But in the midst of this retribution let us not forget the 
possible healing. Tears of penitence must wash white the 
soul, that all may be able to shower back upon him the 
blessings of their fullest sympathy. 

I can imagine a master and his slave blundering togeth- 
er into a new world, where they have practically learned 
the creed that all men's rights are equally sacred. The 
slave, abject, dark-minded, and revengeful in soul, his 
school-masters all his life having been fear, ignorance, and 
want ; and the master, arrogant, selfish, vindictive, and ob- 
stinately willful, and they stand in the new moral light 
about them, looking at last into each other's faces as man 



Law and its Sanctions. 327 

to man. Now let all men and circumstances rally and 
tear off the veil, forcing them each to see distinctly. The 
poor slave is totally unfit for his new conditions ; but shall 
no pity be felt for his past sufferings, and nothing be for- 
given him that he has made no better use of his powers ? 
Will there be no one found to teach him now ? No one to 
share with him the burden of his incapacities ? And what 
of the master ? Malevolence itself would not call now for 
scorpions to sting him, or for scourges to lash his already 
bleeding wounds ! Forced to contemplate the injured 
soul of his victim — a desolate waste, overrun with hate- 
ful passions, and an unspeakable poverty of good ! Forced 
to look into his own being with its even deeper dark- 
ness, the shadows and mildew of despicable wrong- doing 
and its blighting effects ! Ah, this is enough ! And every 
eye condemns him. Let his remorseful penitence bite and 
devour him till he is willing to confess and forsake his 
long injustice, and to begin the holy, atoning work of 
reparation. To this he must turn at last ; and can justice 
ask more ? Or can benevolence give more ? 

I can see this master now kneeling by his slave, and 
with manly sincerity revealing to him the barrenness and 
guilt for which they are jointly responsible ; and, begin- 
ning with the simple truths which have been so long hid- 
den, teach him some of the sublime principles of universal 
science, physical and moral. All things in nature and 
Providence seem to me alike coordinated with so desira- 
ble a result. 







M 








SOCIAL PROGRESS. 

[]T is now quite generally admitted that both indi- 
vidual and social development are the legitimate 
outgrowth of constitutional facts, variously stim- 
ulated by external conditions. When everything else is 
found to act according to the innate properties of its 
essential nature, as acted upon and modified by other 
forces, mind can scarcely be regarded as an exception to 
this law. One cannot doubt that a normal unfolding of 
mental powers is secured by an innate necessity. Mental 
growth is generally as unpremeditated as growth of the 
body ; since the exercise of all the functions of mind, in 
infancy, and to a large extent through life, is quite invol- 
untary. The direction of development depends largely 
upon the stimulating external conditions, thus originating 
peculiar, one-sided characters, individual and national. 
Ancient Sparta raised patriots, heroic and self-forgetful, 
but untrained in the gentler domestic virtues ; while Athens 
moulded her nobler sons into artists or philosophers. 

An aggregate public sentiment, which we call the spirit 
of the age, is the great educator. It re-casts whole races 
of men, literally re-creating them ; it is perhaps more po- 
tent than innate constitutional bias. We talk of meta- 
physical Germany as if no other country could have given 
birth to Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel. If this be true, 
it is so, possibly, because no other land has so persistently 
clung to the delusion that the scheme of the universe can 
be fathomed by thought. While they ignore the objective 
phase of philosophy, they are necessarily lost in the mazes 



Social Progress. 329 

of ideality. By way of reaction the material side of Ger- 
man character, especially as developed in the masses, is 
grossly and amazingly materialistic. Again, Americans, 
largely casting aside precedent, and striking out a new 
order of practical democracy, have developed self-confi- 
dence, ingenuity, invention, resources in every direction ; 
till every man is more or less sharpened into an individu- 
ality, and I am sorry to add, also, often a vanity of his own. 
The Chinaman, on the contrary, has been exactly the op- 
posite of this. He aims to step as carefully into the foot- 
prints of his father as his small-footed wife does into the 
small shoes of her mother, — of course century after cen- 
tury passed, and China seemed to ride at anchor on the 
ocean of time. The spirit of the Chinese age seemed 
perpetually becalmed ; but we shall soon see, since they 
have begun to accept intercourse with other nations, and 
have opened a university for the cultivation of modern 
science, how all this will steadily change their nationality, 
how progress will glide in at every opening, till its leaven 
permeates the old senseless stability which has so long 
defied the Christian era. 

A nation is but an aggregate of persons \ and we know 
that a child trained by educated parents is nearly certain 
to acquire something of the parental tastes ; while the un- 
fortunate offspring of the vicious or the vulgar are mould- 
ed, as a rule, into the likeness of their surroundings. The 
most plebeian boy will often become a gentleman under 
favorable conditions, while the son of wealth and culture 
is almost certainly degraded to the level of his training, 
when the position of his family has been shipwrecked. 
Now and then a genius overleaps the barriers about him, 
and, once started in a new direction, he moves on with in- 
creasing ease and freedom. While on the one hand it is 
certain that mental traits are often hereditary, on the other it 
is no less certain that education dwarfs or stimulates, so 
that the progress made both by persons and communities 



330 Social Progress. 

has been that of a ship driven onward under the com- 
bined impetus of counter forces, and the real advance 
made has been due rather to the inherent coordination of 
things than to the direct intentions of any human agency. 
How far personal and national characteristics are attrib- 
utable to external stimuli and how far to properties per- 
taining to each type of mind, is still an open question. 
It possibly may be shown, hereafter, that of the five or six 
typical races of men, each is as unique in mental as in 
physical traits. The African is by some of his best friends 
believed to be the highest human type of a social and sen- 
suous temperament. By his long suffering, his patience, 
docility, and teachability while in slavery — by his forbear- 
ance, magnanimity, and courage during our long war, and 
by his self-poise since he has become a freeman, he cer- 
tainly has given high evidence of a wonderful susceptibili- 
ty to some of the sublimest virtues. His hilarity, his love 
of music, his religious fervor, and his enjoyment of tropi- 
cal warmth and harmony of color and outline, make it at 
least presumable that he may yet lead in a civilization of 
gorgeous artistic beauty, of social good fellowship, and 
generous fraternity, such as the world has not known hith- 
erto. External conditions must greatly affect a child or a 
savage ; but a cultivated man in his maturity may rise 
above his surroundings ; and in the end, every race of men 
must find its inherent constitutional traits more and more 
potent to determine its social status. Various orders of 
civilization, each charming and perfect after its kind, and 
nicely harmonized with all the others, may yet arise in the 
natural course of human development, in illustration of the 
wide variety of typical minds. Analogy certainly points 
in this direction, and so also do all indications derived 
from existing nationalities, with their peculiar broad diver- 
sities. Enough of likeness pertains to all human races to 
insure to each a keen appreciation of the special excel- 
lences of all the others, with a desire to emulate their 



Social Progress. 331 

preeminent gifts. To this end, there needs not only what 
we are now so rapidly attaining — a free intercommunica- 
tion among all nations, but above all there must arise in 
each of the yet semi-civilized races a belief in the possi- 
bility of superior endowments of its own, awaiting only 
cultivation and development to enable it to be the leader 
of every other in the direction of its own specialties. The 
most barbarous peoples may yet manifest special talents, 
now undreamed of by either themselves or others ; and if 
so, this reserved force, once awakened, will immeasurably 
stimulate all human progress. 

Typical differences seem also to exist in the mental na- 
tures of the two sexes. Such a distinction has been 
largely insisted on as an argument for keeping women 
within their proper spheres. Instead of allowing woman 
to develop any peculiar gifts which she may possess, freed 
from conventional restraints, a predetermined sphere has 
been marked out for her, and she has been rigidly en- 
joined to keep within its precincts. Granted the fact of 
her peculiar feminine gifts, this obviously is a direct argu- 
ment in favor of her developing all her powers untram- 
meled ; and finding for herself her own level in society. 
So only can the world attain to its highest possible ad- 
vancement. Variety built upon a substratum of unity, is 
the order everywhere in nature. The two kingdoms, veg- 
etable and animal, are one in physical structure and 
growth ; and, as we believe, also possessing a common 
mental unity no less conspicuous. The beasts, birds, and 
fishes have each their innumerable species \ why then 
should men be the sole exception to this law of diversity. 
If they differ widely in physical conformation, it is pre- 
sumable that there is a corresponding difference in mental 
endowments or development. Every special type of sen- 
tient being adds only to the exceeding richness and value 
of every other capable of appreciating it \ and each is 
"very good" in its original constitution; whatever may 



332 Social Progress. 

be said of the mode and direction of its present stage of 
development 

The attainments and achievements of each mind are also 
designed to be a free legacy to the race. Discoveries of 
the principles and processes of nature expressed. either in 
language, in machinery, or in art ; the whole body of sci- 
ence, and the whole realm of improvement, constitute the 
wealth of all mankind. It belongs to no one alone, how- 
ever exclusively he may have been the discoverer or the 
originator. Where, then, is room for jealousy, envy, or 
aught but appreciation and generous emulation of the 
best powers of every other being ? No man possesses the 
whole of even human knowledge ; each must be content 
to gain steadily, in common with his fellows, and to know 
that the great residue is parceled out to the universal mul- 
titude. Science arises from the achievement of some ben- 
efactor of all the rest ; but even he is in advance of his 
fellows in but one, or at most in only a few special direc- 
tions, while all around him are pioneers far in advance of 
him in discoveries perhaps equally valuable with his own. 
Thus no one liveth to himself alone, but for the benefit 
of all mankind. However selfish and misanthropic his 
desires and purposes, he must give and take unceasingly, 
from an innate necessity of his nature. The mere love of 
personal gain may lead to the coordination of winds, 
waves, steam, or electricity to machinery, and this to hu- 
man control ; but the result inevitably quickens the prog- 
ress of the race many fold. A world spanned with tele- 
graphs and railroads is impelled on in intellectual and 
moral advancement by the simple correlation of forces. 
The scheme of the universe so binds all things together 
that a forward move in any direction enlarges all other 
capabilities. This has been beautifully illustrated in 
almost every department of science. 

All movements which combine the cooperative energies 
of many persons, and thus closely bind together the inter- 



Social Progress. 333 

ests of the community, point to a new era of progress. 
The more varied the talents and functions of these joint 
workers, the better for the amount and breadth of their 
accomplishment ! Doubtless socialism may have sought 
too eagerly for an air-line route to the desired goal, for 
nature approves of but very few straight lines ! Yet even 
the mistakes of the past are an earnest of good for the 
future ! When we become nobler as individuals we shall 
find better modes of co-working for mutual assistance ; for 
the best good of one is the best good of all. Woman 
must become a broader and more rational worker : more 
self-forgetfully remembering the well-being of the whole 
community; while man must equally learn that charity 
begins with the necessary, unending, small details of home 
and its inmates ; so shall their several talents interweave 
far more beautiful and perfect results than those which 
their separate efforts have yet achieved. 

The code of social amenities has always been refined 
and elevated in common with other branches of science, 
however strong may have been the popular inclination to 
dissociate all higher morality from business relations, and 
from every-day life. Laws of qualitative value have been 
found so personally distasteful and self-subjugating when 
applied to quantitative affairs, that the world will not yet 
believe that they are bound together from an inherent 
unity in the general scheme embracing both ; and not till 
it fairly grasps this thought as a fixed reality, and applies 
it to practice, shall we have entered on an era of progress 
which can at all realize the ideal, ultimate good which 
humanity is yet destined to attain. When the masses can 
perceive that it is an unvarying fact, established in the 
whole coordinated nature of things, that every mind must 
learn to subject all quantitative values to the sublime law 
of the qualitative, or suffer grievously in default of so do- 
ing, then we shall soon progress into a literal earthly mil- 
lennium. We shall simply begin to apply a moral code, 



334 Social Progress. 

noble enough for heaven, but not too noble for earth \ the 
code which is so indelibly wrought into every phase of the 
human constitution that it can never be changed without 
an entire change of the whole nature of man, material and 
rational ; and moreover, which is so thoroughly part and 
parcel of his social being, that if he breaks this code 
either knowingly or ignorantly, not only he himself must 
suffer, but with him must suffer also more or less directly, 
his whole race. 

Humanity is assuredly so constituted as to be guaranteed 
a ceaseless ultimate progress — an unlimited development 
towards perfection. Nations may retrograde, individuals 
for a time may tend downw r ards under the stimulus of ad- 
verse influences ; but so surely as good is intrinsically 
better than evil, as enjoyment is better than suffering, and 
as there is an inherent difference even between positive 
values, men will steadily learn to make better and better 
choices, as they are more enabled to discriminate between 
comparative intrinsic merits. The scheme which includes 
all qualitative correlations is immeasurably more exalted, 
comprehensive, and incomparably more admirable in its 
operations, than any scheme of mere quantitative adjust- 
ments can be ; and it is as unerring and inevitable in its 
final results. Every sentient and rational being must 
needs choose to better his condition perpetually • and this 
instinct, as an ever-active incentive, is a pledge of unend- 
ing progress. 

Perhaps this is the most difficult scheme of thought to 
express fully in language, and make comprehensible to 
another, of which we have yet treated. It is a scheme, 
which, though now in actual operation, is yet only in pro- 
cess of realization, and not, like most other schemes, 
already fully embodied, and illustrated in things ; and only 
repeating itself under new aspects. The schemes of crys- 
tallization, of growth, of the equal action and reaction of 
all material forces ; in short, of every known quantitative 



Social Progress. 335 

process, was long since exemplified in full. There may be 
new applications in other details ; but each entire scheme 
is already not only completed in thought, but actualized 
in fact. This cannot hold true of any scheme of perpet- 
ual progress for either the individual or the race. It may 
be complete as a thought in the conception of the Origina- 
tor, and the conditions necessary to insure its accomplish- 
ment may be incorporated in the mental constitution ; but 
it is necessarily incomplete in its consummation. In quan- 
titative processes, no new element is introduced from the 
first — there is only perpetual repetition of new definite 
combinations of matter and force ; but in mental process 
there is a perpetual new creation of sensations, emo- 
tions, perceptions, and purposes — an endless, endless ', in- 
crease of all sentient experiences. If life, to a rational 
being, is a good at all, it must be, then, possible to make 
it forever better and better • and if He who ordered all 
things has not so ordained it, his work would be then a 
comparative failure. Thus, though the scheme which 
comprehends this distinct order of development must be 
itself incomplete as an actualized fact, like the experiences 
with which it deals, we may perceive all the elements of it, 
as already operative constitutional data • and we may turn 
to logic, to all valid inference and analogy, to aid us in the 
conception of an ultimate perfection in human develop- 
ment, which, from the nature of things, we cannot now 
literally perceive as already attained. 




^•^-^^^^^^g^^. 




SUBSTANCE AND FORCE AS UNCREATED. 

j]N endeavoring to get any idea of uncreated exist- 
ence, or Being wholly without the present consti- 
tution of things, we must let the whole rational 
framework of substance drop completely out of view. 
The mind must rest upon the one fact of Being — existence, 
something which is, but without any of its present modes 
or correlations — pure absolute Being, the self-existing, the 
indestructible. So much we perceive was and must have 
been of innate necessity before time began, else it would 
not be now ; else it could not have been transmuted into 
existing and possible conditions. Something absolutely 
from nothing ! The conception is too incredible for minds 
constituted like ours to entertain it for a moment. 

Being must have existed before the present cosmos 
began, with its limitless series of rational coordinations ; 
nor could it have existed as a total stagnation — an eter- 
nally unchanging whole. It is as incredible that change 
could ever begin to be, that force could originate from 
nothing, as that substance itself could begin to exist. 
Change, then, and the substantial cause or force which 
produces change, must be as absolute, as self-existent and 
eternal, as Being itself. We can fall back upon absolute 
substance, possessing absolute force; but here we must 
find a check : it is impossible for minds constituted like 
ours to go any further. We have lost sight of almost 
everything which we know either of matter or mind, and 
see only that absolute existence and its absolute force are 
alike necessarily existent and uncreated. They are the 



Substance and Force as Uncreated. 337 

basis, the unvarying and original facts of the present sys- 
tem of things. When physicists, therefore, demonstrate 
to us that all substance and all force are alike uncreatable 
and indestructible, they only bring us to the same conclu- 
sion with psychological deduction. 



22 




CREATION. 




j|F we first contemplate simple being, absolute exist- 
ence with its simple absolute force, how then can 
we conceive of tne present complex constitution 
of things as having arisen from this original data. But 
prior to this question of the how, let us contemplate the 
fact. There really does exist a complex nature or consti- 
tution of things, fixed and unalterable in all its essential 
properties, and comprehending all known substances. We 
turn to some of the prominent features of this existing 
constitution and find that the indestructible, uncreated force 
which produces all material changes is made to act under 
a great variety of related modes, so apparently dissimilar in 
process that it is only a recent discovery that these modes 
are correlated and mutually convertible. Each of these 
modes is definitely wrought out after its own specific type, 
and is always unvarying under like conditions ; and the 
relations between them are also perfectly identical under 
identical conditions. We can admit that substance exists 
and that force exists, of simple inherent necessity; for we 
perceive that such must be the fact from the essential 
nature of each, and that no intelligence or exercise of 
rational power was needed to call them into being ; since 
they are themselves the simplest and first facts underlying 
all perception and all conception — the primary starting- 
points of everything actual and everything possible ! But 
we cannot intelligently admit that the present complicated 
system of related, definite, and ordained changes is neces- 
sarily existent, or that it is self-existent ! On the contrary, 



Creation. 339 

we may conceive of it as non-existent — as even entirely 
annihilated, and another and very different system of 
modes and changes reigning in its stead. The present 
scheme of inherent relations must have been first care- 
fully and elaborately devised by rational thought, and prac- 
tically applied to the present cosmos, else it could not be 
now in successful operation. It is intrinsically a rational 
scheme — a scheme of applied thoughts, of pure princi- 
ples actualized in simple self-existent substance and force. 
Our present comprehension of this scheme of creation is 
doubtless both meagre and faulty. We catch glimpses of 
it here and there, and probably misinterpret many of its 
details ; but we surely perceive immeasurably more than 
enough to enable us to determine that Creation, or the 
present Cosmos, must be the product of an elaborate, 
thoroughly matured, and perfect scheme of thought, ap- 
plied and wrought out in primitive Being. 

Substance is not now homogeneous, but heterogeneous. 
We are conversant with sixty-two or sixty-three supposed 
simple material elements, each of which differs widely from 
all the others ; but with every molecule of every given 
element, under all known conditions, exactly identical with 
every other molecule of the same kind. No rational scheme 
is involved in simple necessary existence \ but when sub- 
stance has been so intelligently constituted that all its 
innate properties act invariably according to the most rigid 
mathematical principles ; when more than sixty specific 
kinds of substance have been created, each with a very com- 
plex but definite character of its own, which remains un- 
changed in all inherent properties amid a thousand changes 
of mode and condition; and when all these elementary 
substances are found to be so perfectly coordinated in all 
their many processes that from given data we can predict 
with unerring certainty the inevitable results ; we are cer- 
tainly compelled to admit that here there is evidence of a 
scheme of adjustment relating all these many elements, 



34° Creation. 

forces, and processes, with all the actual and possible 
combinations resulting therefrom. When to these we add 
still another and higher type of substances, whose proper- 
ties and processes become sentient and self- appreciative ; 
and in the highest orders of which there is not only self- 
consciousness, but perception also of the characteristics 
of the not-self, and distinct cognition, not only of the exist- 
ing coordinations of things, but originality to devise new 
adjustments and other conditions, similar in kind, invol- 
ving also schemes of connected rational thought ; are we 
not then compelled beyond question to admit the exist- 
ence of a Rational Thinker, who ordained ail this ? There 
is a positive necessity for rational thought to originate the 
conception and actualization of so stupendous a system 
of things ! We are not, as rational beings, self-existent ; 
and we have not created ourselves ; yet here we are, feel- 
ing, thinking, rational minds. Nothing but intelligence 
could have created us thus. We can immediately per- 
ceive principles of thought as incarnated in things. We 
can comprehend these principles, can express them in lan- 
guage readily understood by other rational minds, and can 
apply them ourselves under new but analogous conditions 
of things. Can all this arise from mere unreflecting 
chance, or from pure necessity — like that which compels 
us to accept the fact of primary, simple, uncreated, and to 
us unknown Being ? The supposition is totally incredible. 
The present Creation, that is, substance with its existing 
nicely adjusted system of constituent properties and pro- 
cesses, is known to us, and is so evidently the outgrowth 
of an intelligent plan, that unless men strenuously denied 
any sufficient evidence of rational thought in the constitu- 
tion of the Cosmos, it would seem impossible to suppose 
that they ever could deny this. As it is, we must believe 
that they simply misunderstand the nature of the Crea- 
tion, or they could not persist in denying to it an intelli- 
gent, forecasting cause. It is indeed impossible to con- 



Creation. 341 

ceive of thought as originating either substance or force 
per se. Absolute Being must be independent of every- 
thing but itself ; but we know that thought could originate 
the scheme of principles which it would be necessary to 
apply in order to regulate the action of gravitation ; that 
thought could settle the question of the proper adjustment 
of the motions needed to produce the revolutions of the 
planets \ that thought could plan a general scheme of 
structure and growth for all organic bodies, vegetable and 
animal, and that it could devise the details of mental and 
physical likeness and unlikeness between the various 
classes of creatures. A rational mind could originate 
these and similar plans for controlling the processes of 
nature \ but nothing except intelligence could do this ! 
The distinctive work of creation would seem to be, the 
originating and actualizing a system of related thought, 
through the aid of already existing substance* and force. 
To take away the element of intelligent design from the 
universe, would be to take from it not only all that is beau- 
tiful or noble, but everything also which is credible or 
intelligible. This universe, with its persisting constitution, 
cannot be shown to exist from internal necessity. We can 
reasonably suppose no intrinsic, unintelligent motive or 
cause why each elementary substance should possess 
exactly its present immutable constitution rather than any 
other ; but we can see that the consideration requiring 
this or some other related scheme must lie in the neces- 
sity for establishing and coordinating all things in order to 
secure a harmonious, cooperative, orderly, and progressive 
whole. The necessity for each special mode is found in 
its relations to all the others, as part and parcel of one 
common unit. The necessity is a purely rational one, like 
the necessity that two and two should make four. Under 
the present nature of things, two and two must make four 
of intrinsic necessity. So every substance must continue 
to possess and exercise its properties of a like necessity. 



34 2 Creation. 

Pure gold, under its present conditions, will be always ex- 
tremely malleable and of a yellow color ; but there is no 
absolute necessity that gold should possess these special 
properties. In short, the present constitution of things 
must be regarded literally as a system of pure principles, 
harmonized in one all comprehensive scheme of thought, 
and actualized in the existing Cosmos. This scheme of 
rational, related thought, realized and maintained in things, 
constitutes the great work of Creation. 

With the progress of science, widening and ramifying in 
every direction, there grows up a mass of ever accumula- 
ting testimony to the intrinsic unity of the whole scheme. 
Nothing is more firmly established. The details of all 
sciences lead to the same wide generalizations, and are 
found to be based upon the same fundamental principles. 
Most unlooked-for kindred features manifest themselves 
perpetually in departments of learning to superficial view 
the most widely removed ; one discovery leads to another, 
often by apparently whimsical and quite unexpected links 
of connection. No one would have supposed in advance 
that a few old bones, accidentally found in the rocks, 
would prove to be the key which should unlock the temple 
where Providence had so long hidden those tables of stone 
containing the laws and chronicles of the pre-Adamite 
ages. No one would have dreamed that every bone was to 
help repeople a new valley of vision reaching back through 
a vista of immeasurable time • and that all science was to 
be illumined anew by the old light which was to come 
streaming down upon it from those remote centuries. No 
one dreamed once that every coal glowing in our grates 
was to be like a living witness to corroborate the testimony 
of the old dead bones, that they all grew successively, 
ages and ages and ages ago, when no human mind was 
there to witness and record the fact that the same iden- 
tical constitution of things was in operation then as now ! 

The different branches of science no longer admit of 



Creation. 343 

any other than an arbitrary division. Every student, if he 
would be a master in his own department, is forced to 
know something of almost everything else. No one at- 
tempts to write an exhaustive treatise upon any topic, who 
does not, of necessity, trace its relations more or less 
directly to almost every department of human knowledge. 
The zoologist surely has a wide primary field in the whole 
group of larger animals on land and sea, and the more 
than 500,000 known species of insects, to say nothing of 
the infusoria ; yet the zoologist finds himself compelled to 
study the plant as well as the animal, that he may distin- 
guish their points of resemblance and difference ; and even 
after the nicest prolonged observation he is unable dis- 
tinctly to draw the dividing line separating the animal 
from the vegetable kingdom. He must study structure, 
and thus he becomes a physiologist ; composition, and he 
is enticed into the beautiful mysteries of chemistry; he 
must study the forces operative in the animal organism, and 
is led on by their correlations into mechanics and out into 
the universal domain of all force, till there is no resting- 
place for him anywhere. But if he comes back with an 
olive-branch into his original ark, and throws his heart 
into the work immediately about him, he soon finds him- 
self investigating the influences of climate upon the ani- 
mal, of location and comparative elevations j and the in- 
fluences of atmospheric pressure, and the pressure of 
columns of water upon sea and fresh water fauna, and 
the relations of the infusoria to the various mediums in 
which they live ; he will be guided into embryology in 
pursuit of the mysteries of growth, and into psychology 
in search of the secrets of related life ; he will delve after 
fossils, and perh *ps wander very far off into the intricate 
stony paths of ar :ient geology, till he loses himself among 
the extinct moraines of the old glaciers. Thus even while 
he is still in the direct pursuit of his own scientific specialty, 
he will almost necessarily become largely imbued with the 
whole of universal science. 



344 Creation. 

A mathematician, feeling no necessity to limit his stud- 
ies in any direction, vibrates like a shuttlecock between 
mechanics celestial and terrestrial, and applies his arith- 
metic to almost everything, from animalcules " not larger 
than from i-ioooth to i-2oooth of a line in diameter," and 
so crowded together that a single drop of water will contain 
five hundred millions of them — " an amount perhaps 
nearly equal to the whole number of human beings on the 
surface of our globe " — to the sun whose diameter is 
found to be " upwards of 880,000 miles," and which is so 
far away from us that " a man travelling in a railroad car 
on an air-line, at the rate of thirty miles an hour, would 
be three hundred and sixty years in reaching it." He 
determines that " a cheese-mite can jump twenty-four 
times his own length," that " a fly so minute as to be 
almost invisible can take 1,000 steps during one pulsation 
of a healthy man's blood ; " that " Mercury at her perihe- 
lion moves along her orbit thirty-five miles in a second ; " 
that " in an inch length of a ray of violet light there are 
fifty-nine thousand seven hundred and fifty-six vibra- 
tions ; " and " if a single second of time be divided into 
a million of equal parts, a wave of violet light trembles 
or pulsates in that inconceivably short interval seven hun- 
dred and twenty-seven millions of times." If he finds 
himself confounded by the growing incredibility of his 
facts, he may recover himself by remembering that prac- 
tical science everywhere confirms theoretical ; that even 
improvers of telescopes learned to adjust their various 
lenses first in mathematical theory, and applying this in 
practice that they obtained anticipated results ; that among 
all the many variations in the movements of every known 
member of the solar system there is a rigid agreement 
between the fact as it is and as it should be on mathemat- 
ical principles; that the planet Neptune was twice dis- 
covered mathematically before it was found in reality ; 
and, in brief, that everything material is found, after re- 



Creation. 345 

peated and multiplied tests, to be rigidly and unvary- 
ingly quantitative, adjusted in "measure, number, and 
weight ; " that organic beings constitute the " higher 
geometry of nature," and that all successful arts or han- 
dicrafts are only so many new modes of applied math- 
ematics ! 

When the most superficial student reads on any topic, it 
perhaps suggests more to him about some other, with which 
he had hitherto supposed it to be only remotely allied, than 
even the information he gains as to the matter directly in 
hand, and he is thus compelled to follow on and on through 
the whole round of known science. Finding himself still 
in the same endless cycle of inquiry, and seeing that 
everything true or valuable which he has learned has been 
drawn by some one directly from the same open book of 
nature, which is forever repeating and illustrating universal 
truths under their great variety of aspects, how can he do 
otherwise than, conclude that the Cosmos is a Universe ? 
It would seem sheer perversity to doubt a fact which is 
becoming forever more and more clear with every fresh 
discovery. 

The several parts of the universal science are all so 
mutually confirmatory, that to prove and illustrate any one 
important fact, it is almost necessary incidentally to 
demonstrate a score of others. The whole infinitude of 
adjustments and adaptations, innumerable as we find them 
to be, are yet all classified under a few simple general 
principles. The widest range of details are massed under 
a common type. It is not more true that gravitation alike 
moves worlds, draws down the floating leaves, and sends 
Niagara tumbling over its ledge of rocks, than that the 
organism of a lichen, a lizard, a forest-tree, an elephant, and 
a man, are all modeled after the same universal organic 
type. The most superficial observer is struck by the mere 
external resemblances of the insect tribe ; but when we 
trace them, family after family, through all their various 



346 Creation. 

transformations in the larvae, chrysalis, and perfect states, 
we recognize the curious, simple, yet recondite plan after 
which, by these distinctly marked stages, all of them are 
similarly constructed. A little knowledge of embryology 
still widens our view, and we find that all organizations 
undergo very similar transformations. Winged creatures, 
whose life is to consist largely in the delights of rapid, airy 
flight, apparently need that their growth should take place 
almost wholly in the sunshine, that they may gather up its 
light and warmth into their intense and concentrated 
vital energy ; but the reflective mammal may complete the 
early stages of growth in the placid warmth of the parental 
bosom, growing into the perfect form of its kind before it 
emerges into the prying daylight ; yet a general unity of 
plan for all organic growth is perfectly evident, and is illus- 
trated even in the vegetable. The progress of science has 
always been a progress towards wider generalizations ! 

All the first principles of the philosophers are in perpet- 
ual working order everywhere. Not a nook, or corner, or 
side bit of effect, whether in the deepest wilderness, the 
most barren desert, the highest mountain, or the most 
populous city, has ever been discovered where a different 
order of things prevailed. Even in the minutest details, 
there are absolutely no exceptions anywhere, to any one of 
the established principles of nature ; apparent exceptions, 
on a more careful investigation, are found to be only su- 
perficial ; and a better understanding of the matter proves 
them, often, to be striking and peculiar illustrations of the 
very law to which they at first seemed to be exceptions. 
As the same mother-earth sustains all the fauna and flora 
which grow upon it, so a grand unity of rational scheme 
must have originated all the adapted principles of crea- 
tion. Thus Gravitative force, universal and unceasing in 
its operations, performing important work in the economy 
of all things, from the smallest to the largest, must have 
been forecasted in all its minutest bearings upon its infinite 



Creation. 347 

range of objects \ before it could have been adopted as the un- 
changing law to which everything else was to be adjusted ; 
and all these various adjustments are themselves estab- 
lished, immutable facts. How can we do otherwise than 
conclude that the same Author originated the entire ra- 
tional scheme which we see exemplified equally in every 
department of being ? If creation must be regarded still as 
finite ; yet one who could devise and execute this creative 
scheme, must be himself in the possession of powers 
which are infinite ! 








IPPt'f 


vW^2*^^ 


tg^nfe^^^^^jl 


ESrM 








SPwi^Jm^ w^Tv^ifcffifl 



THE NATURE OE THE CREATOR INFERRED 
FROM THE CREATION 




ERY much has been said and written on the sub- 
ject of Cause ; and many kinds of cause have 



been 



distinguished 



and defined; yet there are 



but two essentially different classes of causes. These two 
are cooperative ; but generically unlike in character. The 
one is substantial or quantitative cause, which is literally 
converted into the effect, — the sum of causes in every 
instance being exactly equal to the sum of their effects, 
and vice versa. The other is rational or qualitative cause, 
which, through intelligent and designed modifications and 
combinations of substantial causes, produces new foreseen 
or desired events. 

There is almost nothing in a civilized town which is not 
the direct product of human calculation, foresight, will — 
effects produced by rational, finite causes. Each mother is 
a special providence to her own child. The Esquimau 
clothes her little one to give it warmth ; the Congolian lays 
hers in the shade to cool it ; an English princess enfolds 
hers in soft linens in summer and in softer woolens for 
winter ; and the Irish peasant wraps hers in its few rags 
for July, and in its many rags for January. They are all 
rational causes, seeking means for securing the well-being 
of their children. We all admit that the curious great 
clock in the Strasburg Cathedral must have been planned 
by some mind ; and that the minute watch set as a gem in 
a lady's finger-ring must have been the product of fore- 
thought and design ; can we not, then, fully perceive that 



The Creator. 349 

nothing less than Mind could have planned the present 
universe ? There must be an adequate rational cause for 
so preeminently rational a scheme of coordinations ! 

I, for one, do not claim that God is the substantial or 
quantitative cause of Creation ; or that He is Himself, in 
any sense, the totality of things ; but that He is the per- 
sonal, rational Being who constituted the present cosmos, 
and who is Himself manifested in his works. I find proofs 
of one infinite, consistent, beneficent design in the whole 
system of coadaptations — in the whole constitution of 
every atom, sentient and unsentient. Everything testifies, 
not only to an intelligent cause, but to a Cause adequate 
in comprehension and power. Not until I can believe 
that the thermometer, which it is self-evident has been 
planned and beautifully adapted for the measurement of 
heat, had no rational cause ; but was either self-created or 
the work of chance, can I believe that the solar system 
was self-created or the product of chance. We are all 
ready to give credit to the inventor of the planetarium, 
which is only a puerile, aping mechanism, but faintly illus- 
trating the original ! If there is no rational cause mani- 
fested in the vegetable and animal economy of this earth, 
no design shown in the growth of new vegetation from the 
decayed tissues of the old, and of the higher animal tis- 
sues from the low, then there can be no design indicated 
in anything, for there is no evidence more conclusive of 
anything in nature ! We ourselves are but so many stu- 
pidities, not capable of deciding upon any question of 
causation ! If one might challenge the assent of an intel- 
ligent mind to any proposition whatever, surely he might 
do so to the assertion that Nature is one vast compilation 
of internal evidence as to the forethought and purpose 
which coordinated all its properties and processes. I 
claim, therefore, immediately to perceive that Creation 
had, and must have had, a rational Creator. 

But rational powers, as we have already seen, can only 



35° The Creator. 

pertain to a personal mind; and if God is a rational 
being, then He is a real and true person. He thinks, 
feels, and acts ; possessing a living, sentient nature of his 
own ; and however different may be his type of mind from 
ours, however above and beyond us, and therefore to us 
incomprehensible, yet his nature like ours must be indi- 
visible and indestructible. 

What then can we learn of his attributes ? His wisdom 
is so manifestly great that we must assume it to be Omnis • 
cient. We can define his attributes only in relation to 
the corresponding attributes of men, existing simply in 
flniteness. Infinite wisdom must be the knowledge of all 
things actual or possible — of things existing not merely, 
but of all possible creations and combinations — knowl- 
edge actually unlimited by anything actual or possible ; 
but even Omniscience would be limited by impossibilities. 
For example, God cannot know to be true what is not 
true ; or he cannot know to be false something which is 
not false. 

Infinite wisdom, of course therefore, must know every- 
thing which is known to all finite minds. If our knowl- 
edges were all added to His, they would not increase it ; 
and if all finite knowledge were obliterated from the uni- 
verse, this would destroy nothing which is in the intelli- 
gence of Deity. This suggests the question, Is our 
knowledge, so far as it extends, identical with God's, and 
a part of it ? 

" If God is omniscient or infinite in wisdom/' it is said, 
" then He is the totality of wisdom ! If He is omnipotent 
or infinite in power, then He is the totality of power ! If 
He is infinite in all his moral perfections, then He is the 
totality of moral perfections ! If He is infinite in his essen- 
tial being, then He is the totality of being ! All knowledge, 
all power, all perfection, all essential being is then a part 
of God ! " This is the logical result of one mode of con- 
ceiving of those absolute attributes which we call infinite ; 



The Creator. 351 

and by which, in reality, we mean absolutely boundless or 
limitless. But the nature of all personal properties and 
modifications is such that no being can by any possibility 
possess them for another ! 

For example, knowledge is a personal modification, sub- 
jectively considered. Deity may know all things and man 
only a few ; but these few are in themselves, or objectively, 
exactly the same, and neither more nor less, whether known 
to God, to one man, or to many. I know that two and 
two make four - Deity knows this also ; but from the in- 
trinsic nature of knowledge, you cannot add these two 
knowledges together and thus increase the amount ! It is 
already complete — absolute in itself; so that the knowl- 
edge of a million people on this point would be no greater 
and no clearer than the knowledge of the one. This 
knowledge, then, cannot be objectively increased or dimin- 
ished. We learn from this simple illustration, that if Deity 
knows all things actual or possible, the knowledge of all 
finite minds together cannot increase the total amount; 
and if there were two Infinite Beings, or indeed many 
of them, yet the sum of actual knowledge could be no 
greater ! Our personality is no more merged in that of 
the Creator, because we may have a knowledge of some 
of the same things, than it is merged in that of our fellows 
for the same reason. Light is always light ; yet the little 
flame of the burning candle is its own, belonging in no- 
wise to the sun. 

Again Omnipotence may be defined as, the power to do 
all things actual or possible ; for Omnipotence, also, must 
be limited by the impossible. It could not, at one and the 
same time, both establish the existing nature of things 
and also destroy it ; or do any other rational impossibility. 
Finite power sustains exactly the same relation to infinite 
power that finite knowledge does to infinite knowledge. 
All things which man can do, God can do also. His power 
to accomplish everything actual or possible is already per- 



35 2 The Creator. 

feet, so that all our might added to his could not enable 
him to do anything more. If I am perfectly able to lift a 
feather or to make a simple choice, then nothing can add 
to my ability in this respect. Subjective knowledge im- 
plies something objective to be known, and subjective 
power is also allied to the objective \ but the personal 
element in it pertains to the one personality alone. If 
God has given me power to choose right or wrong, as I 
myself will, then He cannot compel me at the same time 
to act against my own choice — that is, He cannot make 
me free to choose and necessitated to choose at the same 
time and in the same sense. He is limited here by the 
natural impossibility ; and having decided to give me free- 
dom of action, he must henceforth influence me through 
motives. 

We turn, then, to the moral perfections. The evidences 
of unlimited Beneficence are so manifold, his attributes 
as manifested to us through his works are so wholly beau- 
tiful and good, that we are compelled to ascribe to the 
Creator infinite goodness. Yet He has not, therefore, 
absorbed all virtue in himself; for goodness, like knowl- 
edge and power, is a subjective or personal attainment — 
a mode of the very being itself. By becoming good our- 
selves, we take nothing from the Creator or from. any other 
being. No one can take my personal goodness from me, 
or assume it for himself, any more than he can so take 
upon him my vices, or than he can assume my personal 
identity. This is, as we have seen before, true of every- 
thing qualitative or pertaining to mental experiences. 
Each mind, whether of plant, animal, man, angel, or Deity, 
must act for itself, know for itself, be for itself ; possess- 
ing all its own mental properties and treasures of whatever 
character. Mind is like the widow's cruse of unfailing 
oil, and the barrel of meal which should never be dimin- 
ished ! Draw from its stores and give to others abun- 
dantly ; yet the immortal well-spring is in the soul, the 



The Creator. 353 

granary is within the mind. You may add every day 
possibly to its riches ; but you can take nothing away. 
This is the distinctive difference between matter and 
mind ; between quantitative processes and the qualitative. 
How, then, can God be the totality of all personalities ? 
He can possess no more than his own personality intact I 
He may possess infinite wisdom, infinite power, infinite 
goodness ; but He does not therefore possess, in his own 
experience, any finite wisdom, power, or virtue ! My con- 
sciousness cannot be a part of the consciousness of even 
its Author and Creator ! My personality is not a fragment 
from Himself; though it may, in a finite degree, have been 
made in his own likeness. 

" He that teaches man knowledge, shall not He know ? " 
is the old Jewish argument ; and it can stand the test of 
ages. Nothing but an intelligence could have created us 
intelligent. One who could appreciate the dignity and 
excellence of a conscious personality, could alone have 
given me a personal identity, inalienable from myself. 
There must be a Creator possessing conscious, personal 
attributes, or rational effects exist without their adequate 
causes ; which is incredible ! 

We have found that for every appetency there is always 
its coordinated supply ; but the strongest man feels weary 
sometimes, helpless and impotent ; there is no human 
power mighty enough for him to rely upon it ; and there is 
a craving after reliance upon the boundless love which is 
above him. The little child may be content with parental 
tenderness and affection, clinging with instinctive trust to 
any one who manifests these in its behalf ; but the same 
instinct in man must look higher for its satisfaction — as 
high as the Infinite, upon whom both its affections and its 
rational demands can centre. An atheist, like a mother- 
less child, may be comforted by all the kindly influences 
about him. He may reason himself into the stoicism of 
privation, and may feel, at times, in himself strong and all- 
23 



354 The Creator. 

sufficient ; but there come moments when if he could find 
such a Creator as even he himself is able to conceive of, it 
would be an infinite relief ! His filial soul yearns for the 
universal Mother. 

There are wrongs which a good man cannot right, and 
they burden his soul ! The more noble he is, the more he 
suffers from a sense of his own incapacities, and the bound- 
less need of a Beneficent Helper. To be able to fall back 
upon a being wise and powerful, even if no better than 
himself, would afford him immeasurable satisfaction. To 
be able, then, to find one, infinite in all his attributes, who 
is really ordering all things ; and as far as may be, bring- 
ing evil out of good, must give a sense of boundless con- 
tent ! His weakness is coordinated with the strength of 
the omnipotent Father. 

No one could rationally choose to live in a universe 
which was simply under the control of blind, irrational, 
quantitative properties, if he could find one governed and 
guided by a rational mind. To think of countless systems 
of worlds, whirling through space with an inconceivable 
velocity, each revolving on its axis, and rolling in groups 
around a common centre ; and all, probably, circling still 
more rapidly about larger centres — an almost infinite, 
moving, but soulless mechanism, of frail, poorly adhesive 
materials, is rather less satisfying than to think of yourself 
as floating alone in mid-ocean at the mercy of the elements. 
Catastrophes may be less near ; but they would be more 
grandly awful. To be assured that there is an Almighty 
Arm and a Sleepless Omniscient Eye, able to see all things 
and to reach everywhere, cannot fail to bring its own com- 
fort ! 

Think again of the myriads of ignorant, free agents — 
rational minds indeed, but sunk in most irrational pur- 
suits ; and not content with blindly sacrificing their own 
best interests, but everywhere periling the well-being of 
others, till the world has become a "vale of tears." Amid 



The Creator. 355 

all the disorder incident to this system of rational action, 
where the strong are often too cruel, and the helpless suffer 
too acutely for us to find for them in this life any compen- 
sation, there must be a wonderfully sustaining power in 
the consciousness that an All-sufficient Helper is continu- 
ally adjusting and re-adjusting all complicated interests, 
with all the impartiality of absolute justice and of infinite 
benevolence. 

While He allows mankind, as finite rational causes, to 
continually intervene for the creation of new events, He, 
the Original Cause of the whole complicated system, could 
not have intended to sleep meanwhile ; allowing by any 
possibility his ultimate ends to be disarranged ! Nor does 
He sleep. If there was a Creator of the whole adapted 
scheme of things, there is also a continuous Providence, 
forever aiding in the consummation of his own designs. 
The constitution of his universe was long since fixed ; but 
its destinies are yet in abeyance ; and He who inaugu- 
rated the processes of nature, must be unrestingly super- 
intending them still. So far as man is permitted to be 
rational cause of new events continually, cooperating with 
the established principles of nature, so far, at least, may 
the Creator of those principles, He who actualized them 
everywhere in things, also superintend their processes, 
even though He should work no miracle. A wise sculptor 
may trust to his assistants the marble which is to realize 
his ideals ; but in the important moments when all may be 
lost or won, does he leave his directive duties to another ? 
With his own hand he may work out the final results ! 

A Creator necessitates a Providence; and nature as it is 
necessitates a Creator. If the Universe were all quanti- 
tative, and must consequently move forward in the very 
grooves which were marked out for it, the case would be 
otherwise ! The nature of things, then, being essentially 
fixed and irrational, might have a supposed self-existence, 
which would work out precisely the results which do 
accrue \ but when the whole is complicated with living 



356 The Creator, 

beings, with their continual increase of sentient expe- 
riences, when the universe is no longer merely a fixed 
unvarying quantity, but is allied to forever increasing 
qualities of good or evil, it becomes far otherwise. The 
interests at stake are then too far-reaching for any mere 
fortuity to have invested itself with them. The beautiful 
coordinations of things become too self-evidently adapted 
to the highest well-being of all sentient experience not to 
reveal the intelligence which coordained them — the bene- 
ficence which was the underlying element of the whole 
creative scheme. If the rocks and rivers may have a 
Creator, all sentient beings, irrational or rational, who have 
been made capable of suffering as well as enjoying, must 
have a Father. Our sense of moral fitness and of moral 
justice would be utterly shocked otherwise. 

Deity, if He exist, a Being unlike ourselves, Infinite in 
all his attributes, must of necessity be to us incompre- 
hensible in the fullness of his perfections. If we cannot 
altogether fathom the nature of the bird or the insect, 
because they are so fkr removed from our own experiences, 
and their capacities so unlike ours, it must be hopeless to 
reach immeasurably above and beyond our own powers. 
Is the Creator himself self-existent ? He must be ! At 
least so far as our universe is concerned, He is apparently 
absolute ; personally independent of it and all its concerns, 
except as He voluntarily chose to interest Himself in its 
creation. There we must leave the subject ; for we may 
as well, with our present powers, hope to find the outer- 
most world and the pure space beyond in which all exist- 
ence ceases, as to find the mental conditions or limitations 
of the Infinite, Creative Mind. We know Him only as He 
is revealed in his works ! 

The inherent need of every sentient being for a Pro- 
tecting Power who will sacredly guard all his interests ; 
who will practically maintain the principles of equity 
which He himself has established, is to me the strongest 
possible proof of his existence ! 



